When Details Derail CX Goals: Lessons From The Starbucks Strike

Is there anything more dangerous than half your workplace going through caffeine withdrawals on a Monday morning?

That was the case for many on May 12, when a new Starbucks dress code policy went into effect. The policy, announced April 14, 2025, allows baristas to wear only solid black shirts and khaki, black, or blue denim bottoms.

Let’s be honest: when it comes to customer experience, dress codes are pretty small fish to fry. And updating workplace-appropriate t-shirt colors? That’s like frying minnows.

Yes, dress codes contribute to the overall customer experience. They reinforce brand image, establish a sense of prestige, and even the bad ones still help customers quickly locate employees.

But I’ve never thought to myself, “This coffee would taste a lot better if the barista making it was wearing a black t-shirt.”

Starbucks believed the updated dress code would “deliver a more consistent coffeehouse experience,” that helped employees “focus on what matters most, crafting great beverages and fostering connections with customers.”

Instead?

It ignited a nationwide barista strike that, as of this writing, now involves 1,000 Starbucks workers and impacts 75 locations.

The Starbucks Workers United Union also filed an amendment to unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks. Given that the number of unionized Starbucks stores increased roughly 121% between 2023 and 2024, it’s not unreasonable to predict these strikes will multiply quickly.

Though seemingly innocuous, the dress code update gave unionized Starbucks workers the chance to publicly leverage their grievances against their employer. Now, baristas are picketing in front of Starbucks stores, organizing walk-outs, talking to news outlets, and sharing it all on social media. No matter your thoughts on the validity of the strike, the consequences are the same: Starbucks has lost business, suffered reputational damage, and disappointed customers. 

Was a dress code policy change really worth all that? 

Don't Sweat The CX Small Stuff

As an analyst, I constantly see companies prioritize details at the expense of the big picture when it comes to customer experience.

Businesses implement powerful virtual agents to save customers time, but force them to wait on hold for half an hour before transferring them to a live agent. They use AI-powered forecasting tools to optimize employee schedules, but don’t bother to monitor agent performance. They praise personalization, but still rely on canned responses and stale scripts.

These companies think they’re innovative, but really, these details are just distractions that further degrade the customer experience.

Customer experience isn’t about the small fish, like t-shirt colors or even creatively spelled names on cups.

It’s about the Big Fish: providing customers with an experience that is consistent, convenient, and efficient. It’s about keeping the basic promises you made to your customers–like being open to serve coffee. If you deliver on the basics, your customers won’t be bothered when the little things don’t go right. 

But if you don’t?

Improving the customer experience is next to impossible. 

The Devil's In The CX Details

They haven’t hired any more baristas, provided any employee-facing support tools, or increased compensation as a result of their new standards. Employees are burnt out, citing inconsistent training, a lack of standard rules for order channel priority, and low staffing levels as serious performance setbacks.

It’s not that the employees are lazy. It’s not even that those striking actually care about shirt color mandates (frankly, I can’t remember the last time I saw a barista wearing anything other than a black shirt.)

It’s that Starbucks is distracting itself with dress codes to avoid the real–and much more difficult–problems. Problems like long order wait times, inhospitable stores without enough seating, poor coffee quality for the price, and messy tables. Fix those things, and customers won’t even notice what your employees are wearing.

If you really want to improve the customer experience, you have to tackle the big problems first, and you have to prioritize the basics above all else. 
If something gets in the way of the promises you made to your customers?

Declare a CX state of emergency and do whatever you have to do to fix it–even if it means negotiating with your employees about t-shirt colors.