Business Analysis: Starbucks After evaluating (Exhibit A), Starbucks should invest $40 million per year to increase working hours per store to solve the problem with quality of the service. Starbucks should also establish an internal strategic marketing team. This will allow Starbucks to have proactive feedback on customer satisfaction and therefore faster improvement. Labor costs are high for Starbucks' North American operations. To keep labor costs at a reasonable level, Starbucks should reduce waste in beverage preparation, maintain consistency, and improve productivity. The company needs to invest more money in automated espresso machines. Currently, sales of coffee drinks represent the majority of total sales, and therefore, Starbucks should increase sales of food products and coffee beans and develop non-retail sales channels, which do not require as specific training as that relating to the production of coffee-based drinks. .Due to the increase in the number of Starbucks customers and the demand for highly personalized drinks, the workload per worker is very high. This translates into decreased service and conversation times between Starbucks baristas and the customer, and increased stress for baristas. Furthermore, research found that a large number of customers point out that "treated like valuable customers", "friendly staff" and "fast service" are the most important factors in creating customer satisfaction. An investment of $40 million per year will help eliminate service time and customer satisfaction issues by reducing time blocking and help increase customer satisfaction at all levels.