Starbucks will stop offering breakfast sandwiches. Other than the fact that they didn't taste very good – purely a subjective perspective, admittedly – there is another angle here. Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz commented that the aroma of the sandwiches fought with the coffee aroma which is a key element of the Starbucks identity and experience.
Aroma is putting it kindly. Those sandwiches are downright stinky.
Reminds me of conversations with clients about business requirements for a web build. One common request is to "future-proof" an architecture so that unknown requirements lurking in the future can be accommodated. There are certain classes of requirements for which this is possible – in particular, those that can be addressed, say, by abstracting a data layer, or building a rules layer.
And there are others you just can't see. Think back 7 years or so, when the basic plan for a Starbucks location was developed. The requirements included
- Consistent design and fixtures
- Adaptable to newly-built locations, as well as being squeezed into highly-variable existing locations in urban settings
- Accomodate variety of beverage choices, and to-go baked goods (Aside: remember when Starbuck baked goods were truly local, varied from store to store, and tasted good?)
Do you think anybody volunteered a requirement to accomodate high-volume ventilation to account for the "aroma" of breakfast sandwiches being "warmed"? Doubt it. And they certainly didn't build for it.
If they had identified the requirement, would it have made sense to build ventilation – probably at some expense in those funky urban locations – to insure against a potential future expansion of their offering?
Doubtful.
When looking at a largish-scale build that a client considers to be a major architectural step-change, it's worthwhile to spend a little time looking at potential future business directions, and evaluating not just the need, but the potential near-term cost, to address them. In most cases, it won't make sense.
But somebody should write the requirement down and put it in the same folder as the potential business idea. They'll be a step ahead – and possibly insulated from a bone-headed move like stinking up a coffee store that counts on experience to help insulate hefty margins.
Anybody want to buy a few hundred warming ovens? They work pretty well for Quiznos...
I needed to schedule service for my wife's new car. I used the handy form provided by the dealer, and specified email as my preferred medium for response on the time I had requested. Two days later, no response - other than the new car sales emails I was immediately signed up for, in blatant disregard of CANSPAM.
