Coffee City
Melissa Allison follows the world's biggest coffee-shop chain and other Seattle caffeine purveyors.
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Starbucks goes lean in the U.S., opens second shop in the Netherlands
Posted by Melissa Allison
The Wall Street Journal documents how Starbucks is becoming more efficient in stores, shaving seconds off the time it takes to make a Frappuccino and making customers happier. It means the chain can serve more customers and/or have fewer workers per store.
One training tool used by Scott Heydon, Starbucks' "vice president of lean thinking," who studied the Toyota production system, and his team is Mr. Potato Head. Over the course of two hours, the manager of a store in Oregon City cut the time it took her to assemble Mr. Potato Head from more than a minute to about 16 seconds. "That really opened my eyes," she said.
In other Starbucks news, the company will open its second store in the Netherlands tomorrow, after seven years of roasting coffee there. Starbucks' first Netherlands store is in an airport. The second will be at Utrecht Centraal Station, and later this year, a store will open at Amsterdam Centraal Station.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
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