If your usual order feels like it should already be known by the time you pull up to the speaker, Starbucks is starting to think the same way. On its October 29 earnings call, chairman and chief executive Brian Niccol laid out the next phase of the company’s plans for 2027, and much of it is about making the app and the drive-thru feel less generic and more tuned to the person ordering.
The drive-thru is where the change starts. Roughly half of Starbucks customers use the drive-thru, and in fiscal 2027 the company will begin testing background AI models that help baristas enter orders more accurately and efficiently while they keep talking with guests. This is assistance behind the counter, not a replacement for the person taking your order.
A Drive-Thru That Recognizes Regulars
Starbucks is also exploring a step further: experiences that recognize participating customers when they arrive, show them a personalized digital menu, and make payment easier. Niccol was careful not to oversell it. He called it premature to get specific, and the company has not said how participating customers would be recognized, when such a menu might be tested, or where. What is clear is the boundary Starbucks itself drew. This is described as an experience for participating customers, not a blanket change for everyone in line, and the company says it will test, learn, and scale what works.
That restraint matters for regulars. A menu that surfaces your usual could save a fumbled moment at the speaker. A menu that guesses wrong, or feels intrusive, would do the opposite. Starbucks has framed this as exploration rather than a launch date, and the testing will decide whether it earns a place in the lane.
Delivery Moves Inside the App
The app is getting a more concrete change. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, Starbucks plans to integrate delivery directly into its app and let Starbucks Rewards members earn and redeem Stars on delivery orders. Delivery often lives outside that familiar flow today, so bringing it inside the app, with Stars attached, closes a gap regulars have felt for a while.
Starbucks is also working on AI powered search and discovery in the app, with conversational and agentic ordering flagged as possibilities over time. Niccol described the broader goal in plain terms: making the app even more intuitive for customers to order, customize, and get what they want wherever they are. Recommendations and menu content shaped by a customer’s own preferences sit at the center of that.
Why Personalization, and Why Now
This is not a side project. Niccol now describes Back to Starbucks as the company’s growth plan, not just its turnaround plan. He tied the digital work to a simple observation: service times are on target, stores feel warmer after more than 1,700 coffeehouse uplifts, and Rewards has reached a record 36 million 90-day active members. With that foundation in place, the next push is the ordering experience itself, and for partners the promise is practical: less time wrestling with an order at the speaker means more time for the greeting and the handoff that made many of us regulars in the first place.
None of this arrives all at once, and some of it may never arrive in the form first described. What Starbucks announced is a set of tests and a direction: a drive-thru that helps its baristas rather than replacing them, an app that brings delivery and Stars together, and a menu that learns from the people who use it. If the tests hold up, the morning run could soon feel more like being recognized, which has always been part of what a neighborhood coffeehouse is supposed to do.
