☕ Starbucks: What direction will it take? 📉
Starbucks $SBUX may have slightly beaten Wall Street' s expectations and posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, but it's also struggling with a decline in same-store sales - and for the fourth straight quarter. 📉

Same-store sales fell by 4 %, with the main factor being 6% decline in footfall.
US sales also fell by 4 %, attendance even by 8 %.
In China,Starbucks ' second-largest market , sales fell by 6 %, mainly due to competitive pressure from Luckin Coffee and other lower-cost players.

💰 Financial highlights for the latest quarter:
Earnings per share: 69 cents (vs. 67 cents expected)
Total revenue: $9.4 billion (vs. $9.31 billion expected)
Net income: $780.8 million, down from $1.02 billion a year earlier

📌 Why is Starbucks losing customers?
The main problem is weaker customer traffic, suggesting that people are either looking for cheaper alternatives or starting to make their own coffee at home. Changing consumer habits are also playing a big role - whereas people used to visit a coffee shop every day, they are now more selective about when, where and if they spend their money at all.

📈 Starbucks launches turnaround plan: "Back to Starbucks"
New CEO Brian Niccol (formerly head of Taco Bell and Chipotle) wants to bring the brand back to its roots and improve the bottom line. His plan includes:
Reduce product offerings by 30% - simpler menus, faster service
Eliminate surcharges for plant milks - more customer-friendly approach 🌱
Focus on core product - coffee ☕, fewer promotions and optimized pricing
Invest in technology - new equipment (e.g. Siren equipment) to help baristas make drinks faster
Change corporate structure - reorganize management and layoffs

📌 What's next for Starbucks?
Fewer new stores - Starbucks will temporarily slow expansion and instead focus on renovating existing coffee shops and optimizing costs. However, Niccol believes it can double the number of stores in the U.S. in the long run .
Improvingservice - The company is testing a new order management algorithm that should optimize the speed of beverage preparation and eliminate chaos behind the counter.
Pressurein China - Starbucks is looking to respond to aggressive pricing policies of local competitors and is seeking strategic partnerships to better position itself in the market there.

The stock responded to these results by rising more than 8%.

Are the changes at Starbucks the right move, or is this just a short-term patch?