Starbucks spent tens of millions automating their inventory management. Instead, they made things worse.
This wasn’t some abandoned pilot at select locations. This rolled out to over 11,000 stores. Initial pilots and testing, hardware, software licensing and support, internal project management costs, employee training. The cost ran into the tens of millions. Starbucks may not even the full number once you account for their employee’s vocal frustration.
NomadGo, the provider, called manual inventory “the most inefficient process imaginable.” They promised their system was up to 8x faster and 99% accurate. That sounds like magic, if you ask me.
It wasn’t. Product shortages and labor costs got worse, instead of better.
Not every AI project fails this visibly. The most insidious fail quietly while slowly eroding a company’s processes and culture. These are the ones nobody sees coming.
I ran the Starbucks rollout through the Crossfactors Framework. The failure points are exactly what you’d expect. Too bad most enterprise AI teams aren’t checking for them.