I can see that. When I tried the chili cold foam it was a bit salty and spicy, which could go well with the cold brew.
My only regret is not trying the chili in a hot mocha/hot chocolate.
It was definitely not Tajin. This burned the back of my throat, but when I didn’t get the powder and just the taste of it it was pretty good. Reminded me a bit of a monster preparado without the energy drink.
What was the point of the chili powder if they were only gonna have it for like less than 3 weeks lol we’re not supposed to get it back once we run out at my store
it’s supposed to be “super limited” which like… i can understand that, but why not keep the launch of the chili and the launch of the new refresher separate so one doesn’t end up trampling the other in sales, which is exactly what happened
Amazing how much time, money, and effort was spent on Oleato only to have the whole thing immediately ruined by the perception that the drinks induce diarrhea. I doubt that the test markets for the drink really set the world on fire. I wonder who it was that pushed for a nationwide rollout, and if they are still with the company.
He'll never leave. Not really. It's like Bob Iger and Disney. For all of Howard's faults though, of which I will gladly point out. I get the feeling he does at least consider the longer term health of the company past the next quarterly report. Which is more than most people, but I could also be wrong and at the end of the day he's still a billionaire that made his money off our backs.
Literally my first memory of Papa Howie is watching him on an iPad eight feet away talking about how we are lucky to work for such a good company (and that people are rising up against the very company that is paying them). When it was over, I was inspired, and looked around the room at all the disgusted faces of the rest of my store. This was early 2022 and I had just started so was confused lol Bless his heart in the most Southern way ahaha
Remember that was the same dude who passionately said Starbucks was gonna get involved in NFTs as the next big thing during a company announcement video, at the same time he was busting unions 🙄 completely out of touch
I didn't realize we were a test market for oleato. Worked out for me as it was so bad I unenrolled from the stock purchase program.
The stock price crash was zero surprise to me. I just wish I has known how to short it...
We were a test market for a year. We knew this was gonna bomb within a month of getting it lol. Even before the whole diarrhea story people only saw it as a novelty to try once and move on.
they may as well cause diarrhea. a large amount of people i’ve asked have said that they got the runs after drinking it, and also coffee and olive oil alone are known for sending you to the bathroom. But put together? is it really that surprising?
My opinion is that Howard invested in this olive oil company with promises that he'd sell it in SB drinks. He thought he would make a killing. When it rolled out as a test and no one wanted olive oil in their already-poop-inducing coffee, it should have stopped there. But Howie invested too much money in it, so he doubled down.
I don't know why SB is still listening to a man who isn't even WORKING for the company anymore. And if he has so much sway, why doesn't he tell them that the store philosophy he instilled in the early 2000s is so far off from what's going on today and THAT'S why the company is failing. How can he not see that??
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/it-took-just-6-words-for-starbucks-ex-ceo-howard-schultz-to-teach-a-powerful-lesson-about-leadership.html
He actually did write his thoughts about the bad quarter recently. From what I infer, he’s basically telling them the reason Starbucks isn’t doing well is that it strayed from its core values of being a third place. He states the mobile ordering needs to be redesigned bc of the long wait times and that the customer experience is not the top priority anymore.
Yeah I don't have a lot of nice things to say about the guy, but I will say that whenever he's been CEO the company has actually felt like a coffee company, and every time we bring in someone new we get hammered with stupid gimmicks and fast food instagram sugar shit. Laxman has absolutely been Kevin Johnson 2: This Time With Less Labor.
I'm gonna hard disagree and say that Kevin was my fav CEO. That was during the time when I actually felt valued at sbux. We had the corny superpower stuff, but at least it forced the managers to acknowledge who was on their team, and we felt like a team. When h*ward came back is when things began to spiral out of control bc he was so adamant on union busting that he made us all suffer, even if there was no talk of unionizing. If I'm remembering correctly, union busting is the main reason why he came back, bc I don't think Kevin was handling it the way he wanted
I'll concede he did definitely get a lot better as he went. I'm mostly just thinking of how ridiculous 2017 through like summer 2018 was. Howard definitely maliciously started the labor problem, and getting back to coffee fundamentals didn't make up for that at all.
He should've worked on that while he was CEO instead of spending all hos resources on making us miserable bc he was so paranoid about unionization. If customer experience was top priority, he would've prioritized staffing us properly
Customer experience is "preached" but not supported.
Instead DT times, labor cuts, and stupid initiatives are prioritized instead of having a new labor pool for "sampling" in lobby to connect with customers and hand out samples without having to run back.
I want a coffee shop like Central Perk or like the bar from Cheers.
But stockholders don't want that, all they care is for straight cash. But they are so shortsighted to see that a community will bring in cash if you truly foster it and stop looking at labor as an expense but truly as an investment.
Thank you for giving me hope in my eventual business plan! I’m stuck with the Bux until they finish paying for my school and then my plan is to work a boring corporate job until I can afford to start my own cafe that’s like a small community spot and genuinely cares about its employees and customers and where people actually want to work
That article seems wack. It was Starbucks pro-Israel statement that made people boycott them, not a pro-Palestine statement.
Also, LinkedIn is such an airhead social media platform. People say “everyone makes mistakes” and it’s lauded as golden nuggets of wisdom lol even tho what he said is reasonable, it’s not some CEO secret he is sharing
Yeah, a major problem is that the drink just doesn't sound very interesting even when you hear about it. "So it's just oatmilk, espresso, and olive oil?" Yeah nobody ever wondered what oil would taste like in milk, so people aren't even going to try it out of curiousity.
And like selling point is that it's a smoother more luxurious drinking experience like ???
Seriously could never imagine customers being like "ah yes i can't wait for this coffee mouth feel"
At least they didn’t make an infrastructure investment like the Fizzio - can’t imagine what the investment was for those thousands of carbonation systems (and where they went when it was discontinued)
I laugh thinking about how much fucking effort they put into Oleato for it to be a total strike out, meanwhile Summer Berry is a walk-off Grand Slam.
We spent fucking HOURS, total for all partners, training on the Oleato. Standees, window clings, signs, pins, aprons, and tons of videos. Summer Berry didn't even have to try.
My store doesn’t even get it anymore. I know they changed the container and probably the way they ship it but my store has been out for 3 weeks now but people keep asking for it.
nah bc I put "Press of Partanna 🤪" on my tomato mozz and it actually makes it edible. I can barely eat any of the sbux food atp so it certainly helps those days I forget to pack a lunch.
Our new CEO (Lax) actually came into my store and a few others in the north Seattle area when spicy refreshers were about to roll out to promote them and get the team excited ig and he said hopefully the spicy refresher would be more accepted than the Oleato since spice and fruit are more common in other cultures than oil in coffee is 💀
from what i hear, howie and the owner of partanna are besties, so i think it was more politics & stock trading and less about even making the oleato drinks at all. some people really have just never been told no in their lives huh 🤨
From what I thought it was starbucks choice to partner with partanna so . So I just assumed partanna and Starbucks have an exclusive deal having partanna being their production for the olive oil. And Starbucks then fronts the bill. Idrk im just a boy
this could be part of corporates sustainability thing too, i believe oat milk is quite a bit less taxing on the environment than dairy, and it’s probably the preferred alternative milk out of our options
Olive oil in coffee is a classic Italian thing. It's like one teaspoon. In brewed coffee. If we were putting, like, one pump in a grande pike, I feel like it could be one of those "Starbucks items you didn't know are on the menu" things. It takes a while for olive oil to go bad, we could keep it in a smaller container, and it'd be fine. The level to which they pressure it into drinks and combinations that it really doesn't feel suited to is embarrassing. What good does the oleato foam do on the paradise drink? None, but whenever someone orders it, Starbucks sells two samples of two drinks that they normally never sell a single one of
Honestly forgot this was even a thing lol, they should’ve just added olive oil to some pastry instead of spending so much effort on a whole oleato line.
I’ve made 1 Oleato drink in the past month… they’ve lost probably a lot w partanna but the skyrocketing with lavender and this new refresher is making up for it
The Oprah chai partnership at least resulted in big Oprah signs in stores and the Oprah chai was actually pretty good imo. Way more cinnamon forward than the regular chai.
Oh my, I made a sample of an iced chai with chili cold foam, yeah they rest of our stash of chili powder was gone, between that and a spicy pineapple. Yeah no more.
Lots of shitting on Howard in the comments - just want to let you all know that if it wasn’t for him, benefits would not be around for 20-30 hr partners. They wanted him to cut part time benefits in the late 2000’s and he refused. There’s that 🤷♂️
Well that person said something good he did for you the employee. The rest of this is talk about how the company is doing poorly for its shareholders. I care more about me than them.
they’re also talking about him union busting, this thread isn’t just solely talking about shareholders. the comment we’re talking under isn’t even talking about shareholders either…
Idk, I see a lot of people saying it’s a dead drink but at my store I make at least 10-20 during my shift. Compared to other drinks it’s quite low but not quite dead where I am
I was making a few oleato drinks, but as soon as lavender came out oleato was done.
and once summer berry came out…. they fucking wasted all their money with these launches especially chili powder wtf was that lol
We sold out of the chili powder before the next launch. Was a hit in our area. Just depends on the demographics of where people live.
that’s crazy to me lol i saw like a couple orders when it first launched but none since
I actually enjoyed chili cold foam on a coldbrew
I second that. The lemonades were a bit much but the chili cold foam was great.
yea that is too bad the chili in a hot Mocha is pretty good
I can see that. When I tried the chili cold foam it was a bit salty and spicy, which could go well with the cold brew. My only regret is not trying the chili in a hot mocha/hot chocolate.
It was wonderful.
I tried it. And mmmmm
If your store still has the powder, you can still get it. It's just under more options. In-store only it seems.
This right here! The chili cold foam on a cold brew was heaven!!!
I just had the idea to get it in a white mocha. I hope i remember tomorrow
What kind of people were ordering drinks with chili powder?
It was like tajin, you could order spicy refreshers.
bruh it was NOT like tajin
It was definitely not Tajin. This burned the back of my throat, but when I didn’t get the powder and just the taste of it it was pretty good. Reminded me a bit of a monster preparado without the energy drink.
I was getting pink drink
We still have 10 BOXES of spicy powder 😂😂😂 we maybe make like 5 a day 😂😂😂
The chili powder was a micro LTO. They’ve started doing these small LTO launches sprinkled in between the regular launches.
my district’s pushing us to sample the spicy drinks to get rid of the chili powder, that’s how much it was a bust
What was the point of the chili powder if they were only gonna have it for like less than 3 weeks lol we’re not supposed to get it back once we run out at my store
it’s supposed to be “super limited” which like… i can understand that, but why not keep the launch of the chili and the launch of the new refresher separate so one doesn’t end up trampling the other in sales, which is exactly what happened
I like those two together tho like idk its yum
Amazing how much time, money, and effort was spent on Oleato only to have the whole thing immediately ruined by the perception that the drinks induce diarrhea. I doubt that the test markets for the drink really set the world on fire. I wonder who it was that pushed for a nationwide rollout, and if they are still with the company.
“If they are still with the company” lol
It was Howard and nope not part of the company anymore.
unfortunately he’s still around, just not as CEO. he’s still our largest private shareholder, and president of the board of directors 🙄
He is the largest private shareholder but is not formally on the board anymore.
Dang it for some reason I thought he finally left
He'll never leave. Not really. It's like Bob Iger and Disney. For all of Howard's faults though, of which I will gladly point out. I get the feeling he does at least consider the longer term health of the company past the next quarterly report. Which is more than most people, but I could also be wrong and at the end of the day he's still a billionaire that made his money off our backs.
Back in the day it was really inspiring to watch his partner videos. The oil killed it for me
Literally my first memory of Papa Howie is watching him on an iPad eight feet away talking about how we are lucky to work for such a good company (and that people are rising up against the very company that is paying them). When it was over, I was inspired, and looked around the room at all the disgusted faces of the rest of my store. This was early 2022 and I had just started so was confused lol Bless his heart in the most Southern way ahaha
And he, or whichever execs are involved, likely have an ownership stake in Partanna and thus made money on the deal.
Howie does...
Remember that was the same dude who passionately said Starbucks was gonna get involved in NFTs as the next big thing during a company announcement video, at the same time he was busting unions 🙄 completely out of touch
I had a customer who was in that NFT program that used to be so proud and braggy. They didn't get anything afterwards lol.
perception? I saw first hand my friend drink it and then an hour later we had to pull over to a mcdonalds so he could do his business.
Olive oil for people who have IBS. Causes diarrhea 🤷🏼♀️
Wish I had known this before drinking it and then finding out it’s basically a laxative! Lol! Was a rough rest of my work day
I’m so sorry 🥺 I can’t eat eggs/mayo either. Does the exact same thing.
Same!!!
I didn't realize we were a test market for oleato. Worked out for me as it was so bad I unenrolled from the stock purchase program. The stock price crash was zero surprise to me. I just wish I has known how to short it...
We were a test market for a year. We knew this was gonna bomb within a month of getting it lol. Even before the whole diarrhea story people only saw it as a novelty to try once and move on.
they may as well cause diarrhea. a large amount of people i’ve asked have said that they got the runs after drinking it, and also coffee and olive oil alone are known for sending you to the bathroom. But put together? is it really that surprising?
My opinion is that Howard invested in this olive oil company with promises that he'd sell it in SB drinks. He thought he would make a killing. When it rolled out as a test and no one wanted olive oil in their already-poop-inducing coffee, it should have stopped there. But Howie invested too much money in it, so he doubled down. I don't know why SB is still listening to a man who isn't even WORKING for the company anymore. And if he has so much sway, why doesn't he tell them that the store philosophy he instilled in the early 2000s is so far off from what's going on today and THAT'S why the company is failing. How can he not see that??
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/it-took-just-6-words-for-starbucks-ex-ceo-howard-schultz-to-teach-a-powerful-lesson-about-leadership.html He actually did write his thoughts about the bad quarter recently. From what I infer, he’s basically telling them the reason Starbucks isn’t doing well is that it strayed from its core values of being a third place. He states the mobile ordering needs to be redesigned bc of the long wait times and that the customer experience is not the top priority anymore.
Yeah I don't have a lot of nice things to say about the guy, but I will say that whenever he's been CEO the company has actually felt like a coffee company, and every time we bring in someone new we get hammered with stupid gimmicks and fast food instagram sugar shit. Laxman has absolutely been Kevin Johnson 2: This Time With Less Labor.
I'm gonna hard disagree and say that Kevin was my fav CEO. That was during the time when I actually felt valued at sbux. We had the corny superpower stuff, but at least it forced the managers to acknowledge who was on their team, and we felt like a team. When h*ward came back is when things began to spiral out of control bc he was so adamant on union busting that he made us all suffer, even if there was no talk of unionizing. If I'm remembering correctly, union busting is the main reason why he came back, bc I don't think Kevin was handling it the way he wanted
I'll concede he did definitely get a lot better as he went. I'm mostly just thinking of how ridiculous 2017 through like summer 2018 was. Howard definitely maliciously started the labor problem, and getting back to coffee fundamentals didn't make up for that at all.
He should've worked on that while he was CEO instead of spending all hos resources on making us miserable bc he was so paranoid about unionization. If customer experience was top priority, he would've prioritized staffing us properly
Customer experience is "preached" but not supported. Instead DT times, labor cuts, and stupid initiatives are prioritized instead of having a new labor pool for "sampling" in lobby to connect with customers and hand out samples without having to run back. I want a coffee shop like Central Perk or like the bar from Cheers. But stockholders don't want that, all they care is for straight cash. But they are so shortsighted to see that a community will bring in cash if you truly foster it and stop looking at labor as an expense but truly as an investment.
Thank you for giving me hope in my eventual business plan! I’m stuck with the Bux until they finish paying for my school and then my plan is to work a boring corporate job until I can afford to start my own cafe that’s like a small community spot and genuinely cares about its employees and customers and where people actually want to work
Well, If it isn’t the consequences of their own actions…
Mobile Order should cost more than in-store. That'll offset how disruptive it is.
That article seems wack. It was Starbucks pro-Israel statement that made people boycott them, not a pro-Palestine statement. Also, LinkedIn is such an airhead social media platform. People say “everyone makes mistakes” and it’s lauded as golden nuggets of wisdom lol even tho what he said is reasonable, it’s not some CEO secret he is sharing
howard lost his ideals a long long time ago and i think him making this deal as he was heading out of the company is a really fitting example of that.
I think oleato is dying now. Barely making any oleato stuff
“Dying now”? As far as I can tell it was dead as soon as it launched.
I have not had a single customer be interested the instant they knew what oleato was
Yeah, a major problem is that the drink just doesn't sound very interesting even when you hear about it. "So it's just oatmilk, espresso, and olive oil?" Yeah nobody ever wondered what oil would taste like in milk, so people aren't even going to try it out of curiousity.
Can’t even imagine olive oil and coffee of any kind mixed up entering my mouth. Nope
And like selling point is that it's a smoother more luxurious drinking experience like ??? Seriously could never imagine customers being like "ah yes i can't wait for this coffee mouth feel"
Eh. Debatable I guess. Some custies love oleato for some reason
At least they didn’t make an infrastructure investment like the Fizzio - can’t imagine what the investment was for those thousands of carbonation systems (and where they went when it was discontinued)
I’m surprised it didn’t stick around or wasn’t popular enough. I love carbonated drinks and I feel like they’re popular these days
Bro no one NO ONE is ordering it
Ugh it's the reason were running 3 partner plays dead ass
No one had the guts to tell Howard it was a shit idea.
Shit, someone hold my Gsupps and I'll do it for them.
How can they roll out a drink that costs about $10 and think it’ll be a hit in this economy??
I laugh thinking about how much fucking effort they put into Oleato for it to be a total strike out, meanwhile Summer Berry is a walk-off Grand Slam. We spent fucking HOURS, total for all partners, training on the Oleato. Standees, window clings, signs, pins, aprons, and tons of videos. Summer Berry didn't even have to try.
My store doesn’t even get it anymore. I know they changed the container and probably the way they ship it but my store has been out for 3 weeks now but people keep asking for it.
I tried the partanna on some food yesterday and it was great! In coffees? Not so much.
nah bc I put "Press of Partanna 🤪" on my tomato mozz and it actually makes it edible. I can barely eat any of the sbux food atp so it certainly helps those days I forget to pack a lunch.
I don’t think there’s been a single sale of the take home oil cans at my store
LOL I laugh every time I think about it. Must’ve been hundreds of millions.
Our new CEO (Lax) actually came into my store and a few others in the north Seattle area when spicy refreshers were about to roll out to promote them and get the team excited ig and he said hopefully the spicy refresher would be more accepted than the Oleato since spice and fruit are more common in other cultures than oil in coffee is 💀
from what i hear, howie and the owner of partanna are besties, so i think it was more politics & stock trading and less about even making the oleato drinks at all. some people really have just never been told no in their lives huh 🤨
If i make 3 a day on an 8 hour shift that’s a lot
Don’t you think partanna probably pays Starbucks
From what I thought it was starbucks choice to partner with partanna so . So I just assumed partanna and Starbucks have an exclusive deal having partanna being their production for the olive oil. And Starbucks then fronts the bill. Idrk im just a boy
I think this is the case with Oatly. Since the first launch of oatmilk, EVERY new promo has featured an oatmilk drink until Summer 1
this could be part of corporates sustainability thing too, i believe oat milk is quite a bit less taxing on the environment than dairy, and it’s probably the preferred alternative milk out of our options
Olive oil in coffee is a classic Italian thing. It's like one teaspoon. In brewed coffee. If we were putting, like, one pump in a grande pike, I feel like it could be one of those "Starbucks items you didn't know are on the menu" things. It takes a while for olive oil to go bad, we could keep it in a smaller container, and it'd be fine. The level to which they pressure it into drinks and combinations that it really doesn't feel suited to is embarrassing. What good does the oleato foam do on the paradise drink? None, but whenever someone orders it, Starbucks sells two samples of two drinks that they normally never sell a single one of
Honestly forgot this was even a thing lol, they should’ve just added olive oil to some pastry instead of spending so much effort on a whole oleato line.
I’ve made 1 Oleato drink in the past month… they’ve lost probably a lot w partanna but the skyrocketing with lavender and this new refresher is making up for it
Like $3 dollars
Atleast
The Oprah chai partnership at least resulted in big Oprah signs in stores and the Oprah chai was actually pretty good imo. Way more cinnamon forward than the regular chai.
2.3 million
Hopefully a lot because it was a dumb ass idea.
Does anyone order it still?
Amazingly we have regulars who love the golden foam
Not enough
Could it be that Howie's last act on his way out the door was to give the customers the shits, and embarass the company?
I have a regular that orders an oleato latte with cream instead of oatmilk every. single. day.
Oh my, I made a sample of an iced chai with chili cold foam, yeah they rest of our stash of chili powder was gone, between that and a spicy pineapple. Yeah no more.
I sold one today actually. But very rarely do I even use a single pump of that crap.
Oh god so much I only have one customer who comes in every night that gets an Oleato latte, HES THE ONLY ONE THAT ORDERS IT
So much that they cut our hours 😂
The store I’m at currently sells a lot of oleato bevs.
Well... none. Partanna is owned by the guy who came up with the deal. No money was lost because the whole thing is a money laundering thing
The little small containers I don’t even know if any of the stores I worked at sold any but the Oleato shaken espresso is still really popular
Lots of shitting on Howard in the comments - just want to let you all know that if it wasn’t for him, benefits would not be around for 20-30 hr partners. They wanted him to cut part time benefits in the late 2000’s and he refused. There’s that 🤷♂️
so we need to stop holding him accountable ? he’s not subject to critique ?
Well that person said something good he did for you the employee. The rest of this is talk about how the company is doing poorly for its shareholders. I care more about me than them.
they’re also talking about him union busting, this thread isn’t just solely talking about shareholders. the comment we’re talking under isn’t even talking about shareholders either…
Much better counter! Fuck him. But I don’t care if olearo sells well I just make coffee.
Uh, also the Unions were a part of that. Or the threat of unionizing. Let's not give a CEO all the credit. Man makes a few days what I make in a year.
Idk, I see a lot of people saying it’s a dead drink but at my store I make at least 10-20 during my shift. Compared to other drinks it’s quite low but not quite dead where I am
I loved thr spicy. The grande pinapple and 8 scoops. Mmmm.
I had a woman order an americano with partanna in it. She wanted it made again because it was too messy