Starbucks bets $1bn on coffee house antidote to lonely digital lives
Easy chairs and rugs are part of chief executive Brian Niccol’s plan to make shops more inviting and boost sales
Starbucks is betting $1bn that an environment with leather armchairs, rugs and hardback books can lure back customers willing to buy one of its $6 lattes and perhaps linger long enough to have another.
The world’s biggest coffee shop chain is making the investment so that as many as 9,000 cafés feel more like a “community lounge”, even serving as an oasis for “lonely and disconnected” lives lived online.
The aesthetic jettisons design austerity that followed the Covid-19 pandemic and contrasts with strategies of fast-growing rivals such as Dutch Bros, 7 Brew and Luckin Coffee, which sell beverages from small shops with few to zero chairs.
Starbucks has already added about 25,000 chairs, some with names such as Viola and Frasca, said Dawn Clark, Starbucks’ senior vice-president of coffee house design and concepts.
“The world is coming back to this, being in a place and meeting with humans, not being distant,” Clark told the FT.
Starbucks is under pressure to increase receipts and improve profitability. After a dismal two years, US same-store sales have risen solidly in 2026, including a 7.9 per cent increase in the latest quarter. Making shops more inviting is part of chief executive Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan, along with faster and friendlier service and new menu items.
“In an age when an unprecedented amount of life takes place online, and a record number of people report feeling lonely and disconnected, Starbucks has doubled down on human connection and customer service,” Starbucks said in an update last month.
Niccol has also set out $2bn in cost savings over the next two years. The company was spending about $150,000 per store on the store improvements, instead of as much as 10 times that sum in past renovations, Clark said.
What Starbucks executives call “uplifts” can be completed at night without forcing temporary store closures. Niccol has said they have driven customer traffic “at a fraction of the cost of earlier remodels”.
The programme is in full swing in Los Angeles, one of Starbucks’ largest and most competitive markets. Since 2025, more than 200 of the metro area’s stores have been redone.
“We’re not focused on changing major functional issues. We’re really focused on creating a warmer and more welcoming experience for customers,” said Clark, a professional architect.
At a café in Beverly Hills, customers sat on a variety of low-slung easy chairs, a banquette and a settee that had electrical outlets in its base to power laptops.
A set of shelves containing books, ceramics and houseplants divided the room in two. Framed pictures hung on a wall repainted sage green. The rugs, drapes and mirror were new for a Starbucks store, Clark said. Before the changes, the shop featured fewer seats and standing tables with walls painted taupe.
But some things did not change, including the floor tiles and countertops, because they were expensive to replace. The banquette seat had new cushions but its scuffed wooden back remained. Clark said in an interview at the store that there was a “difference between patina and damage. The idea that something is worn doesn’t mean we should get rid of it.”
In April Starbucks hired Stephen Piacentini as chief coffee house design and development officer. He previously held a similar role at Chipotle Mexican Grill when Niccol led the burrito chain.
Starbucks last month disclosed more than 100 lay-offs in its coffee house design and development division. A spokesperson said the cuts would not slow down the pace of uplifts. The company is separately hiring a director of design and construction sourcing to oversee more than $1bn in spending while “delivering measurable cost savings”, according to a job advertisement.
Being an inviting “third place” to spend time in between home and work has long been a part of Starbucks’ pitch to consumers.
Starbucks halted sit-down service when the pandemic struck in 2020. When it resumed, social distancing led some chairs to be removed and never replaced.
A push to accommodate customers making quick counter pick-ups using the Starbucks app also coarsened its cosy feel. Mobile orders make up a third of US transactions, more than double the share in 2019.
“They tried to eliminate as much as possible the tables, the seating areas, even the condiment stations,” said Danilo Gargiulo, restaurant analyst at Bernstein. “It was not really a place that invited you to linger around and spend some time with others. It was a place to essentially optimise your transaction very anonymously.”
About 1,500 uplifts will be complete by the end of September, Niccol has told analysts. He plans to expand the programme in future years to 8,000 or 9,000 of more than 11,000 company-operated North American stores, a target that would cost at least $1.2bn at $150,000 a store.
Brian Gorski, a 54-year-old owner of a Los Angeles personal training company, said he visits a Starbucks on Venice Boulevard at 5am. The new look, which includes a woven pendant lamp and a plastic ficus plant, was “fantastic”, he said. “Every single person in line is like, ‘This is nicer than my house!’”
But at 7am he leaves Starbucks to meet friends at an independent shop called 310 Coffee, where the plants contain chlorophyll and photos of customers’ and employees’ dogs are taped to the pastry case.
He said many Starbucks customers seemed in a hurry. “There’s no cross-pollination, no conversation. You can’t just say hello to the person next to you,” he said. When the FT visited the Venice Boulevard Starbucks in the afternoon, customers were seated and chatting.
Starbucks’ competitors in the Los Angeles area include independent shops, local chains such as The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and national brands such as La Colombe and Blank Street, which opened in the Studio City neighbourhood in August. Cheaper options include McDonald’s and Dunkin’.
“They’re getting hit by the craft folks like us. And they’re getting hit by the convenient and drive-through folks,” said Mark Wain, co-founder and president of Los Angeles-based Caffe Luxxe, which took over a storefront vacated by Starbucks last year. Caffe Luxxe coffee shops lacked WiFi by design to encourage socialising, Wain said.
Clark said the new designs aimed to allow diverse uses, from working on laptops to looking for company. “Who knows, maybe they’ll strike up a longtime friendship. Or sometimes they’re just in their own space. But they’re comfortable to hang out there,” she said.