Shining Star for you and me...
We finally were able to lock down the news last week that the overly negotiated plan to bring Starbucks to Disney’s theme parks will soon bring results. The first hybrid Starbucks in a Disney theme park will be at the Fiddler, Fifer and Practical Café (dubbed the Pig Café by Anaheim’s Food and Beverage team) and will open with the rededicated theme park on June 15th. The top-secret plan, dubbed Project Orange in a flourish of dramatic intrigue by the small team assigned to it, has been percolating in earnest since last fall.
We played along in recent months and hinted around the edges of Project Orange over the winter because the Anaheim team was deathly afraid that Starbucks would back out of the deal if the truth got out, mainly over the disagreement with the Starbucks group from Seattle regarding how to train Disney’s Cast Members on Starbucks proprietary systems and equipment. (And who are we to rob you of a decent cup of coffee on a foggy Anaheim morning?) But the Project Orange plan became public on Monday morning after we brought light to the issue last week, and we’ll fill you in on some of the details that were left out of the rather vague press release yesterday.
As mentioned, the first location at the Pig Café on Buena Vista Street won’t be the only theme park Starbucks in Anaheim. The refurbished Carnation Café on Disneyland’s Main Street USA is also planning to implement the same Starbucks concept as the Pig Café when it opens within a few days of Disneyland’s 57th anniversary in mid-July. Just like we told you with the Pig Café, the new Carnation Café will act most like a Starbucks during the morning hours when multiple espresso machines will be steaming away behind the counter, and customers in line can pick up some of Starbucks most popular breakfast items and pastries. By Noon the Carnation Café will transition into its new Disney-created lunch and dinner menu, while the Starbucks Mochas and Frappucinos and Tazo Teas will continue to be made behind the counter.
Just like on Buena Vista Street, period-specific versions of Starbucks logos will adorn the doorways and windows of the Carnation Café. For the Pig Café, Starbucks even agreed to use the more intricate 1971 version of their Norse Mermaid logo instead of the more streamlined modern version found at the 20,000 other Starbucks around the world. The Disneyland and DCA locations would be one of the few places this original logo is seen today, outside of the corporate office in Seattle and the original funky coffee shop still in business at Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market.
Luckily, Disney and Starbucks finally came to an agreement on just how much of Starbucks’ well-honed training the Disney Cast Members will receive. And while it’s not nearly as comprehensive as the regular Starbucks training, it’s going to be dramatically longer and more involved than the training (or lack of training) the Anaheim Cast Members in the Food & Beverage department currently get. The compromise gets the instruction required to staff the Starbucks equipment at the Pig Café down to one week, reduced from the two weeks of classroom and hands on training the Starbucks team was asking for at the beginning of negotiations.
The bigger picture still seems to be lost on most of the TDA team, and that’s the ugly truth that the training and cultural indoctrination newly hired Cast Members receive in the Food & Beverage department in particular is woefully short, in addition to being intellectually weak at best, and useless at worst. Anaheim’s training for Security and Guest Relations Cast Members tends to be the most comprehensive, with the Attractions groups coming in a very close second. Those departments can have training regimens for new hires that stretch towards two full weeks or more. But the Food & Beverage team is lucky to get just a day or two, and even then the training for equipment like the espresso machines at a theme park café is often a 5 minute overview on how to turn on the machine, mash some espresso in the filter, and push the button and hope dark liquid comes out.
The standard rebuttal from TDA is that the Foods Cast Members are the youngest and have the highest turnover that continues to churn quickly even in this tough economy, and so they don’t deserve wasted training dollars. It’s a minor miracle this Starbucks deal came together at all after the reconnaissance work the Starbucks spies did at Disneyland, but hopefully this whole process will open some eyes in TDA about just how abysmal the onboarding and training process is for front line Cast Members.
The Starbucks deal at the Pig Café and Carnation Café will also create a product-placement scenario not seen at Disneyland since the ’70s. The Starbucks setup will resemble the first few decades of Disneyland’s operation when both Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola were sold at different restaurants around the park (Pepsi was sold mainly on the west side of the park with its title sponsorship of the Golden Horseshoe show, and Coke was sold on Main Street and in Tomorrowland). At all the other restaurants and coffee carts in the parks the same old Nescafe dreck will still be sold. If you want your genuine Starbucks drink, you’ll need to wait in the very long lines at the Pig Café on Buena Vista Street or Carnation Café on Main Street, at least for now.