Starbucks online ordering offline for millions as outage strikes app
“We’re having trouble with store locations right now,” displayed a message on the Starbucks app seen by CNN at about 10:30 am Tuesday. “You can still pay in store, but you’ll have to try again later to order ahead.”
DownDetector, a digital issue monitoring platform, showed the number of problem reports for the app peaking at nearly 1,500 at around 9 am ET.
Issues have been reported across major cities including New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago and Dallas, according to DownDetector’s map.
The outage comes as mobile app and drive-thru orders make up more than 70% of Starbucks sales across approximately 9,500 stores nationwide. Starbucks is also set to report third quarter earnings later today.
The Starbucks app, which introduced its Mobile Order & Pay Feature in 2015, allows users to browse available menu items and place orders for pickup at stores. Other features allow customers to register a Starbucks card on their phone to pay digitally and earn and redeem rewards.
Customers flockedto social media to vent their frustration.
“The Starbucks app not working on my birthday is so rude come on,” wrote X user @syndey_fields1.
“We are currently experiencing a temporary outage with the app,” the company’s customer service X account, @StarbucksCare, wrote. “We are aware of this issue and working quickly to get it resolved.”
Other disgruntled users lamented the timing of the outage as occurring on the same day as a buy one, get one free promotion.
Starbucks was among the slew of companies affected by the worldwide Crowdstrike outage that disrupted digital operations across industries last week. A spokesperson said at the time that the company was experiencing issues with mobile order and pay ahead features.
However it’s unclear if today’s Starbucks technology troubles were related to that original outage or another ongoing outage involving Microsoft’s cloud computing offerings.
CNN has reached out to Starbucks for comment.
Despite the significant role of the Starbucks app in business operations, with mobile app and drive-thru orders accounting for over 70% of sales, the outage caused significant inconvenience for customers. The issue led to numerous complaints on social media, with X user @syndey_fields1 expressing their frustration by writing, "The Starbucks app not working on my birthday is so rude come on."
