TheChek News Flow

Cost of HS2 could hit £66bn, according to management estimate

A paper presented to the project’s board has flagged how the price tag could increase by a further £9bn

The cost of building Britain’s High Speed 2 railway has been estimated at up to £66bn, which is a £9bn increase on a previous calculation, in a paper produced this year by the troubled project’s management.

A Department for Transport report on Tuesday will cite an HS2 board paper from June which put cost of the project at between £54bn and £66bn in 2019 prices, according to people familiar with the document. 

That marks a big increase from November last year, when the government revealed HS2’s official estimate of the cost of the rail line between London and Birmingham had risen to between £49bn and £57bn in 2019 prices. 

If inflation is taken into account, the latest estimate of up to £66bn would be close to £80bn in today’s prices. 

Last year’s official estimate of between £49bn and £57bn came despite the then-Conservative government slashing the scheme in half by axing the northern leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, in a desperate attempt to save money. 

The government will dispute the estimate of up to £66bn, saying it is not endorsed by the transport department, according to officials.

One official said the figure was not a formal HS2 calculation but rather an informal estimate based on raw data. But the latest estimate highlights how the cost of Britain’s flagship transport project appears to be out of control.

Mark Wild, HS2’s new chief executive, is carrying out a review of the scheme’s price tag. 

He is expected to take at least four or five months to complete the work. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark comes up with a figure north of £80bn once he’s got to grips with the rising costs and inflation and all the rest,” said one industry figure. 

In October the then transport secretary Louise Haigh announced Wild would be “assessing the current position on cost, schedule and culture, and providing an action plan to deliver the remaining work as cost effectively as possible, including at a realistic budget and schedule”.

Wild will also seek to renegotiate some of the contracts which officials suggested have left HS2 “over a barrel”. 

His review is likely to coincide with the publication of the Treasury’s three-year spending review in June, at which point HS2 is likely to be re-costed to take account of inflation. 

HS2 has been plagued by delays and cost overruns ever since it was given the go-ahead by ministers more than a decade ago, with management blaming issues including cost-plus contracts, an increase in tunnelling and complications with ground conditions. 

The price tag for the line between London and northern England was put at £33bn when it was approved in 2012.

The DFT and HS2 were approached for comment. 

Issues like supply outages or sewer flooding will trigger bigger automatic payments by utilities, say ministers

Water companies will be forced to pay higher compensation to customers in England who suffer from problems including sewer flooding or low water pressure under new rules to be set out on Tuesday by the government. 

Households that suffer from internal floods of sewage could receive automatic payments of £2,000 or more under the plans, up from £1,000 under current rules.  

Payments for low water pressure will jump from £25 at present to as much as £250 under the changes to industry standards called the “guaranteed standards scheme”, which is designed to give a baseline of customer service for the water and sewerage industry. 

Environment secretary Steve Reed said customers had been too frequently let down by water companies when facing issues such as disrupted supplies and contaminated tap water.

“We are clear that the public deserve better compensation when things go wrong, so I’m taking action to make sure this happens,” he said. “This is another step forward in our plans to reform the water sector.”

The reforms, which will be introduced through secondary legislation, were welcomed by the Consumer Council for Water, which said that the changes were long overdue. 

Water companies are negotiating with Ofwat the extent to which they can raise real-terms bills over the five years to 2030, with a final decision expected at the end of this week. 

In July the water regulator angered the sector by rejecting its demand for an average 29 per cent increase in bills in favour of a 19 per cent rise. Water companies argue they need to lift bills because of increased regulatory costs and because they want to carry out ambitious investment schemes.

But water companies have been the subject of growing public anger over a mixture of storm water and raw sewage pouring into rivers and coastal waters, threatening human and environmental health.

Separately the post-Brexit environmental watchdog on Tuesday said it had found “failures to comply with environmental law” on multiple fronts by Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The Office for Environmental Protection examined the circumstances in which the regulatory system allowed untreated sewage discharges to take place, after receiving a complaint from WildFish, formerly known as Salmon & Trout Conservation UK.

“We interpret the law to mean that they should generally be permitted only in exceptional circumstances, such as during unusually heavy rainfall,” the OEP said. “While the public authorities are now taking steps to ensure their approaches are aligned and reflective of the law, we have found that this has not always been the case.”

The Environment Agency said it would carefully consider the OEP’s notice and was “transforming our approach with more people, powers and data alongside better training for our staff”.

Defra said it welcomed “the OEP’s acknowledgment that this government is rectifying the issues identified” and would “carefully consider the OEP’s allegations of breaches before formally responding in due course”.

Ofwat said it was “actively taking steps to remedy the issues the OEP has identified” and would “continue to prioritise our enforcement investigation into all wastewater companies which started in 2021 to ensure that companies are meeting their environmental obligations”.

Tesla is always out to sell cars, but this month it’s really out to sell cars: In both the U.S. and China, customers can take a five-year, Tesla-financed loan on one of its electric vehicles at 0% interest. They can get three months of free charging at its Supercharger stations and three months of free use of its autonomous driving software, not to mention an additional $2,000 discount when the purchase comes via a referral from an existing owner.

The condition: The sale has to close by the end of the year.

There’s a big reason Tesla is on an unusual selling binge: For a decade, the company has achieved an unbroken tear of vehicle sales, posting jumps of as much as 130%; its smallest sales increase—in 2020—was 36%, a number almost any other automaker would die for.

Though CEO Elon Musk says Tesla is no longer a carmaker but an artificial intelligence company, developing Robotaxis and humanoid robots, 80% of the company’s revenue through the first nine months of this year stemmed from auto sales. But this year, there is a real chance that Tesla’s EV sales may shrink for the first time since 2010. That would blemish the company’s reputation—and Musk’s superman persona.

To beat its record 2023 sales of 1.8 million vehicles, Tesla will have to sell roughly 515,000 cars this quarter, 30,000 more than its peak number—the 485,000 deliveries it notched in last year’s fourth quarter.

So Tesla is on a drive to make that happen. In October, Musk told analysts Tesla would not shrink. It would not grow as much as before, he said, but it would beat last year’s sales figure.

That won’t be easy: Troy Teslike, the handle of a widely followed Tesla analyst, estimates the company will deliver 488,000 cars in the fourth quarter and 1.78 million for the year, 24,000 units below last year’s number. The company is struggling especially in China, its second largest market, where its sales fell year on year in October and November.

“It is clear that Tesla continues to struggle with demand problems in the U.S. and Europe despite many promotions to increase sales,” Teslike told me via text.

EV sales growth has slowed, leading legacy carmakers like Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen to curtail their plans for making EVs. But the industry is not quite in crisis: For three straight months, carmakers have sold record numbers of EVs, including a 32% year-on-year jump in November, industry research firm Rho Motion said Friday. For the first 11 months of the year, EV sales were up 25% globally.

But China has accounted for 64% of global EV sales this year, according to Rho Motion, and there Tesla faces stiff competition. Byd, China’s largest EV maker, is on track to sell well over 4 million cars globally this year.

A big difference between the rival automakers: Byd makes dozens of models, almost all of them in both fully electric and plug-in hybrid versions. Tesla took China by storm when it began selling cars in the country in 2019, but it hasn’t released a new EV there since the Model Y in 2021. (Tesla does not sell the Cybertruck in China.)

But the company’s more fundamental problem stems from Musk’s decision to put carmaking on the back burner: The world may in fact go to Robotaxis and humanoid robots, but Tesla isn’t producing those products yet.

The Original Sin: Killing the Model 2

Two decades ago, Musk said he wanted to replace the global fleet of combustion cars with EVs as part of a necessary move away from a “mine and burn hydrocarbon economy.” To get there, he said Tesla would systematically make cheaper and cheaper EV cars until almost anyone could afford one.

In 2020, after producing a succession of relatively expensive EVs, Musk unveiled a plan to produce Tesla’s mainstream vehicle. Tesla would charge $25,000 for it, and it would be for sale in roughly three years. He didn’t give it a name, but a lot of people called it the Model 2.

However, Musk killed the car in April, though, as we reported, it was virtually ready—a small version of the Model Y SUV that was on track for delivery to customers in June 2025. Instead, he said Tesla would make a Robotaxi, a driverless car with no steering wheel or pedals. If buyers loaned them out for fares, they would be cheaper than the $25,000 car he talked about in 2020, and could end up essentially free.

Meanwhile, Musk went into what looked like crisis mode: He fired more than 10% of Tesla’s staff, including the team in charge of its vaunted Supercharger network, as we reported. When some Tesla investors and company observers criticized the move, Musk said he would make everything clear in a public event.

In October, he held that event—a glittering nighttime affair where Musk unveiled a fleet of Robotaxis for an invitation-only audience. Attendees could order drinks from a staff of humanoid robots called Optimus. It seemed impressive—until later, when it turned out that the robots were remotely operated, with hidden Tesla staff puppeteering their movements and speech. As for the two-seat Robotaxis, they were OK as fleet vehicles. Taxi companies might order them for cities; Tesla itself could operate a slew of them. But would they sell in the hundreds of thousands or more to consumers and make Tesla a $7 trillion company, as Musk claimed?

There is a big difference between the Tesla of the 2010s and the company now: When Tesla released the Models S, 3 and Y, it had little competition in EVs. It made terrifically designed vehicles that people loved. The Model 2 had a waiting, salivating market.

The future Robotaxi and the Optimus robots have glitz—but also much competition.

Last week, GM shut down Cruise, its autonomous car division, taking itself out of the competition to field driverless taxis on U.S. roads after pumping some $10 billion into the effort. But Alphabet continues to fund Waymo, which takes paid rides in Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. Zoox, owned by Amazon, operates in six cities, including Las Vegas, Miami and Seattle.

In a Dec. 6 note to clients, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said Travis Axelrod, Tesla’s head of investor relations, had told Yu’s clients that Tesla would start producing the Robotaxi—which some call the Cybercab—in 2026. At high-volume production, he said, it would cost less than $30,000 to manufacture.

According to Yu, Axelrod said the company would start autonomous taxi services next year in California and Texas. The Robotaxi wouldn’t be ready, so Tesla planned to launch the services in existing company-owned Models 3 and Y employing an unsupervised version of the self-driving software, Axelrod said; that assumed regulators would allow the fleets to operate.

Axelrod claimed Tesla could make self-driving cars more cheaply than Waymo because Waymo partnered with automakers such as Jaguar and used expensive lidar sensors, while Tesla would use its own vehicles and rely only on cameras, Yu said. Axelrod also said Tesla’s large fleet of existing cars gave it access to far more data than Waymo collected. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software was training on data processed by 90,000 graphics processing units that Tesla had bought from Nvidia. (Waymo and most other automakers argue that safe driverless cars will require redundant sensors, including radar, cameras and lidar.)

Even if Tesla conquers Waymo, it will face much tougher competition in China, where virtually every EV is equipped with some version of self-driving software. Tesla’s FSD is not yet legal in the country, putting the company behind rivals. In terms of robotaxis, there is competition from Pony.ai and WeRide, among others.

To get FSD approved by Chinese regulators, Musk appears to be betting on his relationship with President-elect Donald Trump. That may be a smart gamble; as we have reported, Chinese President Xi Jinping may consider it in his interest to do a grand bargain with Trump that includes some sweeteners for Tesla.

Even if FSD is approved, Musk will have to contend with his formidable Chinese competition—most notably Byd.

Optimus

In his appearances with Deutsche Bank, Tesla’s Axelrod said the company expected to start selling its Optimus robots to industrial customers in 2026. The robots would have limited capability, handling simple tasks.

Of the major points Yu cited from Axelrod’s presentation, that seemed the most realistic: As we have reported, the type of AI used in humanoid robots is not close to the capability of the large language models used in ChatGPT. No one has sufficient data to train the large behavioral models that Optimus and other humanoid robots would need to carry out the sort of daily tasks Musk promised at the October event—“be a teacher, babysit your kids, walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries.”

Ken Goldberg, an expert on robots at the University of California, Berkeley, told me that no humanoid robot comes close to the dexterity of a human, nor to operating autonomously. “The data we need—it’s not available on the internet,” he said. “The only way to get it is to actually create it by having people control robots or maybe simulation, but that’s not as good.

“If you think we’re here or we’re almost here,” Goldberg continued, “we’re not.”

Perhaps even more than the Robotaxi, Optimus faces formidable competition: Figure makes the 02 humanoid robot, powered by AI from OpenAI. Physical Intelligence, founded a year ago by DeepMind veteran Karol Hausman, has produced a humanoid robot called 𝝅0 (pi-zero). Naturally there is competition in China as well: EngineAI’s SE01 arguably beats all its American competition in terms of delivering a natural human gait.

Musk thinks Tesla’s work on AI gives it a leg up on the competition. Axelrod said Tesla aims to reduce the cost of materials for Optimus to $30,000, which presumably means the company will sell it for less than $40,000. That may sound cheap to a corporate executive considering the cost of a human salary and benefits, plus breaks and vacation. But it turns out robots can suffer the same physical toll as humans in tough jobs. Just watch this video.

Yu for one isn’t banking on big revenue from Robotaxis or Optimus for roughly a decade. Still, he was sufficiently impressed with what he had seen to make Optimus 31% of his valuation of the company today, according to his note.

Yu inadvertently created a stir reporting another Axelrod statement—that Tesla would release a new vehicle in the first half of next year costing under $30,000 after government subsidies. Yu dubbed the car the Model Q. That twist—naming the vehicle—captured the attention of Chinese websites covering the EV industry. Several picked up Yu’s note, spooning in their own spin (for instance that the car was actually called the Redwood).

Excitement broke out in the U.S. as well. Redwood was an alternate internal name Tesla had used for the Model 2. If Musk was thinking of reversing himself again and releasing the Model 2 next year, that would be a big deal.

Alas, Yu told me in a phone call, Axelrod had announced nothing of the sort: He had simply reiterated what Musk had previously said—that Tesla would release an affordable new model in the first half of 2025—and had given no details about the new car. “I think there’s been some misinformation or some misconstruing of information,” Yu said.

The misguided social media excitement over Yu’s note was telling: Tesla would arguably swamp everyone if it released the Model 2. As for the Robotaxi and Optimus—who knows?

Fabled porcelain maker Bernardaud bought 100 percent of fellow Limoges porcelain maker Haviland.

MILAN — Bernardaud, the porcelain maker founded in 1863, said Monday it has acquired fellow Limoges porcelain maker Haviland. Both companies are based in Limoges, France, a region thick with forests and fresh waterways, ideal for producing fine porcelain.

In a statement, Bernardaud said it acquired 100 percent of Haviland’s shares. The purchase price was not disclosed.

“This merger represents a historic opportunity for both companies to combine their skills, know-how and resources, ensuring the preservation of an exceptional legacy while preparing for a prosperous future that respects their distinct identities,” said the company, which was an early exporter to new markets like the United States and remains a family-run firm. Haviland will continue to produce its collections in its Limoges workshops, while benefiting from Bernardaud’s resources and expertise, the firm added.

Both Haviland and Bernardaud share a rich history that emerged in the mid-19th century. They also share an industrial expertise unique to Limoges and its artisans. Haviland was started before Bernardaud in 1842. David Haviland, an American trader and patriarch of the Haviland family, had already created an import company of ceramics and porcelain in 1838 in New York. In search of Limoges’ “white gold,” he traveled the Atlantic to settle in Limoges in 1842, where he founded his own manufacturer. Haviland said the company would later count the wife of Napoleon III, the Empress Eugénie, President Jacques Chirac, Prince Rainier of Monaco, as well as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln among its global clientele.

Small Enterprises Fueling French Economy

Despite the impact of rising inflation and shipping costs, the world of French handmade goods — from its wine to its porcelain — is holding strong.

In November, Institut pour les Savoir-Faire Français, formerly known as the Institut National des Métiers d’Art, said France’s specialized craftsmanship sector now generates more revenues than the pharmaceutical industry.

Spanning 234,000 companies, the category produces combined revenues of 68 billion euros, according to the study published with market research firm Xerfi Specific and which quantified the work of manual activities via a broad survey of skilled artisans such as woodworkers, stone cutters, leather-goods makers, weavers, glassblowers and more. By comparison, the pharma sector generated revenues of 62 billion euros in 2022, according to French pharmaceutical lobby Leem.

Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are getting several new AI-powered upgrades, including the ability to have an ongoing conversation and translate between languages.

Ray-Ban Meta owners in Meta’s early access program for the U.S. and Canada can now download firmware v11, which adds “live AI.” First unveiled this fall, live AI lets wearers continuously converse with Meta’s AI assistant, Meta AI, to reference things they discussed earlier in the conversation. Without having to say the “Hey, Meta” wakeword, wearers can interrupt Meta AI to ask follow-up questions or change the topic.

Live AI also works with real-time video. Wearers can ask questions about what they’re seeing in real time — for example, what’s around their neighborhood.

Real-time AI video for Ray-Ban Meta was a significant focus of Meta’s Connect dev conference early this fall. Positioned as an answer to OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode with Vision and Google’s Project Astra, the tech allows Meta’s AI to answer questions about what’s in view of the glasses’ front-facing camera.

With Monday’s update, Meta becomes one of the first tech giants to market with real-time AI video on smart glasses. Google recently said it plans to sell AR glasses with similar capabilities, but the company hasn’t committed to a concrete timeline.

Meta claims that, in the future, live AI will even give “useful suggestions” before a wearer asks. What sort of suggestions? The company wouldn’t say.

Firmware v11 also introduces live translation, which enables Ray-Ban Meta wearers to translate real-time speech between English and Spanish, French, or Italian. When a wearer is talking to someone speaking one of those languages, they’ll hear what the speaker says in English through the glasses’ open-ear speakers and get a transcript on their paired phone.

Ray-Ban Meta also has Shazam support as of firmware v11. Wearers can say, “Hey, Meta, Shazam this song” to have the glasses try to find the tune that’s playing.

Meta warns that the new feature, in particular live AI and live translation, might not always get things right. “We’re continuing to learn what works best and improving the experience for everyone,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Ray-Ban Meta last got a major update in November, when Meta began to roll out certain AI capabilities to users of the glasses in France, Italy, and Spain. The glasses continue to sell quite well; in October, Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica told Upload VR that Ray-Ban Meta was the top-selling glasses brand in 60% of all Ray-Ban stores across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

What Killed a $20 Billion Grocery Deal? Albertsons Says Kroger Did

In unsealed complaint, Albertsons claims that Kroger’s hubris and reluctance to divest of stores sank their merger; Kroger has said its rival breached the agreement

Within months of Kroger KR 0.15%increase; green up pointing triangle announcing a $20 billion deal to acquire rival Albertsons ACI 1.74%increase; green up pointing triangle, Kroger made missteps that Albertsons said ultimately sank the supermarket megadeal.

A tie-up between the two largest U.S. grocery-store operators was bound to draw scrutiny from government antitrust watchdogs and consumers angry about rapidly climbing food prices. Albertsons officials now allege that Kroger’s approach to the federal antitrust review further stacked the odds against the deal, which was blocked last week by a federal judge.

In court documents unsealed Monday, Albertsons said Kroger showed reluctance to divest itself of a larger number of stores, a move aimed at preserving competition. Kroger executives ignored advice on how to assuage regulators’ antitrust concerns, and disregarded feedback about the deal from the Federal Trade Commission that could have potentially avoided a trial, Albertsons said.

Lawyers for Albertsons accused Kroger of losing interest in the deal after a pandemic-fueled surge in its profits began to cool, and its stock price declined following the October 2022 merger announcement.

“Kroger derailed the merger after suffering a classic case of buyer’s remorse,” according to the complaint, which seeks at least $6 billion in damages.

Kroger had no comment. The company said last week after Albertsons filed the suit that the claims were baseless and without merit. A Kroger spokeswoman has said that Albertsons repeatedly breached their merger agreement and that the suit is an attempt to deflect responsibility and seek payment.

Albertsons filed the lawsuit in Delaware chancery court on Dec. 11, less than 24 hours after the federal court ruling. Albertsons said that its stockholders face a loss of a merger premium valued at roughly $6 billion and that the deal froze Albertsons’s ability to make strategic decisions for the past two years.

Kroger earned more than $2.2 billion in annual profit in its latest fiscal year on about $150 billion in revenue, while Albertsons reported a $1.3 billion profit on about $80 billion in revenue.

Kroger and Albertsons pitched their deal as creating a bigger competitor to megaretailers such as Walmart and Amazon. To address competition concerns the companies offered to sell 579 stores to grocery distributor C&S Wholesale Grocers, but the FTC earlier this year sued to block the deal, claiming that the diminished competition would lead to higher grocery prices for consumers.

Kroger took the lead on efforts to secure government approval of the deal, according to the companies’ merger agreement. Publicly, Albertsons supported Kroger’s antitrust remedies and offered up some of its top executives to lead C&S’s new grocery business that would be built on the divested stores.

“I think they have the fundamental capability and history and the wherewithal to do it,” said Albertsons Chief Executive Officer Vivek Sankaran about C&S during the federal antitrust trial in Oregon earlier this year.

Albertsons now alleges that Kroger ignored more qualified grocery-store divestiture buyers and that Kroger’s insistence on only one company taking control of divested stores limited the range of purchasers.

Before publicly announcing the merger, the CEOs of Kroger and Cerberus Capital Management, the private-equity firm that owns a nearly 30% stake in Albertsons, made a handshake deal that the Cincinnati-based grocer would divest itself of 650 stores in the transaction, according to Albertsons’s lawsuit. That tally was never reached.

When Kroger first met with FTC enforcers in December 2022, it proposed to shed 238 stores, the suit said. Kroger in September 2023 upped its divestiture total to more than 400 stores.

In February meetings with the FTC, Kroger pitched divesting itself of 541 stores, a proposal that Albertsons warned was insufficient. Kroger later bumped it to 579 locations after the FTC sued to block the deal.

Albertsons also accused Kroger of wanting to dump its weakest-performing stores rather than choosing locations to shed that would best alleviate the FTC’s concerns about one company owning a big chunk of supermarkets in some regions.

In a September 2023 email exchange, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen directed that a specific Seattle store be removed from the divestiture list because “this store has real estate that is worth a lot,” Albertsons’s suit said.

Decision comes as chief executive Brian Niccol seeks to turn around sprawling coffee chain

Starbucks has more than doubled paid leave for new parents working at 10,000-plus US stores, a policy change under new chief executive Brian Niccol as the company manages a union-organising push among baristas. 

The improved benefit of up 18 weeks of paid leave will be available to the more than 200,000 baristas, store managers and other retail employees who work at company-operated stores. They currently receive six weeks of paid leave.

Niccol is in the early stages of an effort to turn around falling sales at the world’s largest coffee shop chain since he was hired from Chipotle Mexican Grill earlier this year.

The company is also in the middle of talks to reach a first set of contracts with Workers United, a labour union that has organised more than 525 stores in the US. Workers United on Monday said Starbucks increased parental leave after the union first proposed it last month.

Niccol has visited stores in dozens of markets since he joined in September. “Our benefit was already the best in retail, but after hearing from some partners who shared the leave as new parents wasn’t adequate, we reviewed the programme and have decided we’re making a change,” he said in a message posted online on Monday. 

Beginning in March, store employees who have given birth will be entitled to up to 18 weeks of fully paid leave. Twelve weeks of paid leave will be available to their spouses, partners and employees who are parents through adoption, foster placement or other means besides giving birth. 

The improved benefits bring parental leave for baristas roughly in line with the benefit already available to Starbucks corporate employees. Any US store employees who work at least 20 hours a week would be eligible for the longer parental leave, Starbucks said.

Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks barista and Workers United bargaining delegate, said the union last month had proposed to double parental leave for store employees.

“Without responding to our proposal, the company declared they are expanding leave to all baristas. We are proud of this victory for all baristas,” Eisen said in a statement. “Starbucks is showing that they have heard our demands and are reacting to our growing organising movement.”

Starbucks did not address whether it had made the change in response to a union bargaining demand.

Store operating expenses, including wages and benefits, totalled $12.5bn at Starbucks’ North American locations in the fiscal year that ended in September. A Starbucks spokesperson declined to estimate the additional cost of the improved benefits. Shares of Starbucks fell by 3.2 per cent after the announcement on Monday.   

The new leave policy will apply to the 10,000 stores Starbucks owns in the US, but not the nearly 7,000 licensed stores that are operated independently.

Starbucks has long advertised good pay and benefits compared with other food and beverage outlets. But its baristas have complained of being underpaid and overwhelmed by complex drink orders arriving at the counter and through the Starbucks app.