Starbucks Corp. is brewing a generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant with the help of Microsoft Azure and OpenAI to make its baristas’ jobs easier and speed up service at 35 of its locations this month.
The so-called Green Dot Assist platform, which is scheduled to premiere across the U.S. and Canada in the fall, was showcased to more than 14,000 North American store managers of the coffee giant at a conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Laptops loaded with the GenAI assistant will enable baristas to leaf through manuals and access Starbucks’ intranet — either verbally or by typing — for quick information on everything from making drinks to troubleshooting equipment errors. The point-of-service system takes as little as an hour to learn. Eventually, the assistant will be able to automatically create a ticket with IT for equipment issues or generate suggestions for a substitute when a barista is unavailable, Starbucks said.
“It’s just another example of how innovation technology is coming into service of our partners and making sure that we’re doing all we can to simplify the operations, make their jobs just a little bit easier, maybe a little bit more fun, so that they can do what they do best,” Starbucks Chief Technology Officer Deb Hall Lefevre told CNBC.
More important, the AI rollout could greatly aid new Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s mandate to slash service times per order to four minutes while the Seattle-based company copes with sluggish sales in the U.S.
The company is one of several in the retail industry to turn to AI to simplify tasks for service workers in order to boost productivity. NVIDIA Corp. is teaming with YUM Brands Inc., the fast food conglomerate behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, to improve order taking and overall performance. McDonald’s Corp. briefly ran an AI drive-thru order-taking service with IBM Corp., while Wendy’s has done the same.
The Starbucks’ approach represents more of a hybrid between humans and AI in the coffee business, where robotics are increasingly gaining visibility, and exposure, to serve drinks autonomously.
