Latest AI (coffee) buzz: Starbucks launches ChatGPT app to help customers discover their next drink

Starbucks is getting in on the agentic buzz.

The Seattle-based coffee giant launched a beta app inside ChatGPT on Wednesday, leveraging OpenAI’s chatbot to help customers discover drinks and capture their “vibe.”

Customers can access the app by enabling it inside ChatGPT’s app directory. Start a conversation prompt with “@starbucks” to customize orders and choose a location to order from. While the order can be started in ChatGPT it has to be finished in the Starbucks app or on Starbucks.com.

You don’t need to just have a drink flavor in mind. The bot will even offer up suggestions based on a photo of your current outfit. Based on what I’m wearing right now, I’m not sure I’d want to drink that, but you get the point.

“Over the past year, one thing has become clear: customers aren’t always starting with a menu,” Paul Riedel, Starbucks senior vice president of digital and loyalty, said in a statement to CNBC. “They’re starting with a feeling. … We wanted to meet customers right in that moment of inspiration and make it easier than ever to find a drink that fits.”

Other companies are leaning into partnerships with OpenAI to reach customers through ChatGPT, including Expedia, Zillow, Target, Walmart and others.

Starbucks is in the midst of an operational overhaul under CEO Brian Niccol, who joined the company in September 2024. Niccol led a similar revamp previously as the top executive at Chipotle, and at Starbucks is pairing old-school service standards with new technology.

One of those new tech components is Green Dot Assist, an AI-powered tool built on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI platform that helps baristas look up drink recipes, troubleshoot equipment issues, and figure out where to put staff during a rush. The technology went from a 35-store pilot last June to full deployment across North American stores in November. 

The changes seem to be having an impact.

In January, Starbucks reported its first U.S. comparable transaction growth in two years. Both loyalty members and casual customers are visiting more often. Service times at peak are running below the company’s four-minute target, even with the increased traffic.

Starbucks also announced in March that it plans to open a corporate office in Nashville, Tenn., in a bid to grow across North America and establish “a more strategic presence” in the Southeast region of the U.S. The move will impact some Seattle-based jobs related to the coffee giant’s North American supply-chain operations.

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