Two new drinks: Vivanno and Sorbetto. Review = They both sucko.
I'll get Vivanno out of the way first, since it's available at all Starbucks. My store manager has absolutely forbidden anyone mentioning Jamba Juice and Vivanno in the same breath... but guess what... Vivanno is Starbucks' lame attempt at a Jamba Juice drink. It sucks. We're supposed to refer to it as a "nourishing blend" I guess we're expected to play up the nutritional qualities of this drink since the other qualities, say, flavor, completely suck. The drink tastes like a powdery, bland version of a protein shake. And since protein shakes are already powdery and bland, that's really saying something. Plus, now we have to store boxes of bananas in the back room and keep peeled bananas available at all times. And we need to use only stage 5, 6, or 7 bananas. Bananas have stages? Give me a f**king break. What ever happened to "ripe" and "not ripe?"
Now onto Sorbetto. Sorbetto requires a machine bigger than an espresso bar to make, and it only makes two flavors. One of those is Pinkberry frozen yogurt. Sorry, I don't drink yogurt. Imagine a Slurpie machine with only two flavors... that's the monstrosity that we have taking up counter space. On top of that, it has to be cleaned EVERY NIGHT. This isn't a machine that you just turn off and drop a tablet in. It must be drained, rinsed, sanitized, disassembled, parts washed and sanitized, then reassembled, rinsed again, and finally sanitized again. A barista that knows what he/she is doing can spend up to an hour cleaning this damn thing. That's longer than an entire close usually takes.
I sum this up in one word: ****.
I hate Starbucks. Stores are closing and people are no longer seeing fit to pay ridiculous sums of money for espresso and milk, so Starbucks has decided to try and become Jamba Juice (Vivanno) and Pinkberry. Sorry, Starbucks, you can't be everything. Your stores are failing because of a combination of overwhelmed baristas, a **** economy, and lack of care with the products you already have.
As a Starbucks barista, I have the joy of watching DVDs that are sent to the store containing recordings of Howard Schultz (CEO) yapping about how great all of the companies decisions are. Sorry, Howie, you **** up on these ones. Get rid of all this extra work us baristas have to do so we can focus on making the products that made Starbucks successful in the first place: coffee. People don't come to Starbucks for nourishing shakes and frozen yogurt. They come for coffee, because that's what Starbucks is known for being good at. Baristas and shift supervisors are so overwhelmed that we can't be asked to change the coffee every 30 **** minutes, do a lobby every 10 minutes, stir the machine every 10 minutes, AND clean the store and assist customers. Get real. The people making these decisions for Starbucks have no idea what kind of work it actually requires. They just think, "oooh, frozen yogurt! Yum! Let's do that too!"
****.