Changing Work Patterns Leave Starbucks Weighing Sale of UK Unit

With consumers’ lifestyles permanently changed by the events of the past few years, coffeehouse chains that relied on in-office consumers stopping in on their breaks are forced to reevaluate their business models.

Starbucks, for one, is feeling the impact of this shift. The company is exploring the possibility of selling its United Kingdom business, according to a Financial Times report Sunday (June 17), having taken a hit in the past few years in part because of the shift from on-site work to remote work. The brand’s office district and city center locations have seen reduced traffic, while its suburban and shopping center locations have recovered more quickly.

Starbucks has been responding to these changes, pivoting from focusing on creating its “third place” environment in stores for consumers to spend time on-site to prioritizing off-premise channels, streamlining stores to fulfill digital orders more efficiently.

“Try to imagine thousands of vastly more productive and efficient Starbucks stores, reconfigured to align with today’s customer behavior and built around technology that will deliver increased speed of service, improve labor management and reduce unit costs,” interim CEO Howard Schultz told analysts on a call in May.

You may also like: Starbucks Shifts Focus From In-Store Experience to Digital Efficiency

Indeed, around the world, consumers’ lifestyles have changed. In the United States, for example, more than half of all employees are working from home at least some of the time. Research from the February edition of PYMNTS’ ConnectedEconomy study, The ConnectedEconomy™ Monthly Report: Working In The “Whenever, Wherever” Office, which drew from a survey of around 2,500 U.S. consumers, found that 51% now split their workdays between working remotely at home and working at the office, and 14% exclusively work remotely, leaving only 35% of consumers going into work on site every day.

Related news: Report: Remote is How Two-Thirds of US Professionals Now Work

As such, some coffee chains are seeking out new ways to meet home workers’ remote needs. Last year, for instance, New York City specialty coffee chain Think Coffee launched a Coffee-Break-At-Home program through which employers could order coffee care packages for remote employees.

Read more:WFH Coffee Program Brings Office Perks To Remote Workers

“The amount of remote work job postings has skyrocketed, many businesses are selling off portions of their office space, and some are going hybrid if they call their employees back to the office at all,” Think Coffee Distribution Director Tim Tate told PYMNTS in an interview. “The opportunity to take care of the employee’s coffee needs at home likely exists indefinitely.”

Another New York-based business, restaurant and wine bar Kindred, had a side hustle for some time renting out tables to remote workers for $25 a day, offering unlimited coffee, internet access, charging stations and bathroom use.

See also: NYC Restaurant Has A Solution For Remote Work ‘Laptop Squatters’

Additionally, companies that sell packaged coffee have seen an uptick, with more consumers brewing their cups of joe at home. Sales of Starbucks’ own at-home products has been on the rise, according to Nestlé, which reported in April that, in the first quarter of the year, many of its coffee products’ sales rose at a double-digit rate.