{"id":728966,"date":"2026-05-22T18:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T15:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/starbucks-pulls-its-ai-inventory-tool-nine-months-in-after-it-kept-confusing-the-milks\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T18:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T15:15:16","slug":"starbucks-pulls-its-ai-inventory-tool-nine-months-in-after-it-kept-confusing-the-milks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/starbucks-pulls-its-ai-inventory-tool-nine-months-in-after-it-kept-confusing-the-milks\/","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks pulls its AI inventory tool nine months in, after it kept confusing the milks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The chain is reverting to manual counts across North America, ending one of CEO Brian Niccol\u2019s more visible technology<\/a> bets and adding another data point to the file marked \u201centerprise AI pilots that did not survive contact with the real store.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starbucks has retired the AI-powered inventory tool it rolled out across its North American stores last September, according to an internal news<\/a>letter\u00a0reviewed by Reuters<\/a>\u00a0and confirmed by the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting today, Automated Counting will be retired,\u201d<\/em> the Monday memo read. \u201cBeverage components and milk will now be counted the same way you count other inventory categories in your coffeehouse.<\/em>\u201d In other words, by hand.<\/p>\n

The tool, built by Seattle-based\u00a0NomadGo, used tablet-mounted cameras and LiDAR to scan shelves of syrups, milks and other beverage components and produce automatic counts, replacing manual stock-takes for selected categories.<\/p>\n

It had been in development for several years and was expanded nationwide after Brian Niccol took over as chief executive in September 2024, as part of his \u201cBack to Starbucks\u201d turnaround.<\/p>\n

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The problem, according to Reuters\u2019 February reporting and the company\u2019s own internal materials, was that the tool struggled with the everyday job of telling one white liquid from another.<\/p>\n

The app<\/a> frequently miscounted or mislabelled items, particularly similar-looking products such as oat milk and dairy. A promotional video Starbucks itself released at launch showed the system failing to register a bottle of peppermint syrup sitting on the shelf as it counted the bottles next to it, which is the kind of thing that tends to look worse in hindsight than at the time.<\/p>\n

In a statement to Reuters on Thursday, Starbucks framed the move as a standardisation exercise rather than a retreat.<\/p>\n

The decision came from \u201ca decision to standardise how inventory is counted across coffeehouses as we continue to focus on consistency and execution at scale,\u201d<\/em> the company said, adding that it is moving toward more frequent daily replenishments and continued supply chain improvements.<\/p>\n

An internal note shared by the company quoted an employee thanking the team for ending the programme: \u201cThe thought behind it was great, but the execution was proving difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision matters because inventory was supposed to be the easy bit. Four Starbucks CEOs over five years have blamed lost sales on the company\u2019s struggle to keep stores reliably stocked. In early 2024, by the company\u2019s own admission, fewer than a third of deliveries to Starbucks distribution centres arrived on time and in full.<\/p>\n

Automated Counting was meant to give the chain the live store-level visibility it had been missing, and was one of Niccol\u2019s headline operational fixes.<\/p>\n

It also lands at a moment when the wider record on enterprise AI is starting to look less generous than the pitch decks. MIT\u2019s NANDA initiative\u00a0found last year\u00a0that 95% of enterprise generative-AI pilots delivered no measurable impact on the P&L, despite roughly $30 to $40bn in spend, with only 5% reaching production.<\/p>\n

The Starbucks tool was not generative AI, but the shape of the failure is familiar: a deeply integrated, store-level workflow proved harder to automate reliably than the demo suggested.<\/p>\n

The financial backdrop is mixed enough that the decision will be read both ways. Starbucks posted its strongest quarterly sales growth in two and a half years last month, and the stock is up 24% so far in 2026, but operating margins in its core North American market have fallen to 9.9%, down from 18% two years earlier.<\/p>\n

Niccol has continued to invest in other technology bets, including\u00a0AI tools to sequence orders\u00a0and assist baristas during peaks. NomadGo, for its part, told Reuters it is \u201ccontinuously learning from customer and user feedback\u201d to improve its products.<\/p>\n

The next test is whether daily replenishments and manual counts can do what the algorithm could not, which is keep peppermint syrup on the shelf.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The chain is reverting to manual counts across North America, ending one of CEO Brian Niccol\u2019s more visible technology bets and adding another data point to the file marked \u201centerprise AI pilots that did not survive contact with the real store.\u201d Starbucks has retired the AI-powered inventory tool it rolled out across its North American…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":728967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/05\/Starbucks.avif","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}