Starbucks — Restaurant in Silver Spring Township

So, this is going to be an interesting write up because what I end up saying about this location will be somewhat contradictory to my two star review. This was in reference to a Sunday afternoon visit around 1330, it was busy, it was somewhat a mess and the bathrooms were not up to par with the atmosphere that Starbucks normally provides. We decided to go in because of course the immensely long wait at the drive through.

We ordered 4 drinks total and the register attendant told us it would not be a long wait but I didn't get my hopes up because the lobby was also quite the camp out. After about 20 minutes I decided to go up to the counter and ask her if the drinks were still in process of being made and one young lady, Meg (Meaghan, Megan, her name-tag said Meg so lets leave it at that) said that she was in the process of making one of my drinks and the three other Frappuccino's would be right out.

She promptly made our Iced Tea and she handed off the Frappuccino cups to the separate counter where there was a group of 3 ladies making those types of drinks. Thinking that our other 3 drinks were not going to take long I decided to wait at the counter while other drinks were getting called out left and right as they were finished. One of the ladies picked up our cups and set them back down to discuss an issue that the window operator had with a drive through customer. 10-15 minutes went by and still nothing, empty cups, empty hopes and dreams.

Meg noticed that we had been waiting around 30 minutes at this point for drinks and she decided to take action and go from her station and go to the frozen drinks section and make our drinks herself. She found the cups with our name labels and went to work, not before I caught her facial reaction to the other ladies just talking away while drinks were piling up on their station. Clearly Meg has noticed this type of behavior before and being a true team player decided to take the INITIATIVE and provide great customer service.

Yes it was busy, yes customers can be a hassle, I tell you what though, Meg is the only reason why I would go back to this location. This young lady deserves recognition for her ability to take charge and provide excellent results. Yes it's just making drinks but if she can provide this kind of service at the lower levels of the Starbucks chain, imagine what kind of change she can make when she moves up the ranks.

Everyone else should pay attention and take...

I have never written a bad review of a Starbucks because I worked at a very busy one for 5 years and I understand the plight of the barista. My complaint is mostly about how this store is run, and maybe Starbucks locations as a whole, but my experiences here have been particularly bad.

I understand this is a busy location, and having worked in an extremely busy Starbucks myself I understand that sometimes things take time. But I was always told you do what you can to get drinks to the customers as fast as possible. At this location it seems that customers who order in the store at the counter get the lowest priority, which seems backwards to me. Online orders and drive through orders seem to come up significantly faster and get priority. In fact I've never had a single issue using the drive through at this store.

Every time I come inside and order at the register my order takes an inordinate amount of time. Without fail. And, while I'm waiting on an order drive through orders and online orders are being filled all around mine, and half of the employees are completely uninvolved in drink making. Again, this is not a personal attack against the baristas, this is probably them just following policy, which is very obviously not working. Today I ordered a single iced coffee. One drink. It took ten minutes. I had to ask if it had gotten lost because I was so surprised at how long it was taking. In my experience working in Starbucks if a single drink took ten minutes something was very, very wrong, and if a customer was standing, waiting at the end of the bar for that long I would certainly have asked them what they were waiting on, or at the very least acknowledged them.

Online ordering is killing customer service, and it's become very obvious in this store. There was a point where Howard Schultz (Starbucks former CEO) developed a concept called third place. The idea was that Starbucks could be a place that wasn't home or work that people could feel comfortable to spend time. It seems that concept is dead, now it's just a beverage factory pushing out whatever gets typed in, and that isn't even being done efficiently.

I think maybe getting away from coffee and spewing out a never-ending menu of fruit mocktails and having 6 different nondairy options have complicated something that used to be fairly simple.

Either way, I think I'll be avoiding...

Order accuracy is decent - but I come to find that this location prioritizes the drive through. Whenever I place a mobile order- I wait forever. Today, I saw them put probably 10 cars through even though I had placed a mobile order 12 minutes before I arrived. That was frustrating and that really does happen a lot of times that I come here. I don’t understand the emphasis on the drive through when it’s obvious the majority of those cars are ordering in real time. I also tend to stand there for 10+ minutes before anyone even asks for my name so when they do the mobile orders, they are placing some on the counter when those people aren’t even there yet. I get that it’s supposed to go in order, but then you can’t explain the drive through piece with those orders going first. It’s all very confusing to me. I am sure that logistically that as a customer I don’t understand so I can’t discount that at all, it’s just when you are paying these are the things that we see, not all the behind the scenes of assignments or times or queues. I just wish the orders could be ready when they say they are ready - waiting an additional 10 minutes when I get there when I ordered before I arrived will never make sense to me and does make me not want to use...