Now, under CEO Brian Niccol, Starbucks is spending more than $1 billion to bring back the thing it spent years eliminating. Sure, it’s bringing back comfortable chairs and more seating, but really, it’s bringing back the reason you went to Starbucks in the first place. It’s all a part of Niccol’s ambitious “Back to Starbucks” strategy, and there are reasons to think it’s working.

The latest evidence came Tuesday, when Starbucks rolled out a new store design that—on the surface—looks like a relatively minor change. The company says it will experiment with building smaller coffeehouses that have shorter counters, more compact food displays, and more flexible seating arrangements. This will allow Starbucks to open stores in locations that might otherwise be too small, while keeping the experience customers expect.

That experience part is what’s most important here. Starbucks isn’t just trying to make its stores smaller. It’s trying to make them feel more like Starbucks.

Starbucks forgot what made it special

There was a time when Starbucks wasn’t just somewhere you stopped to get coffee. It was somewhere you went to spend time. You could meet a friend, work on your laptop, or sit in a comfortable chair and read a book. Starbucks famously called this the “third place,” meaning that your local Starbucks would be the place between home and work where people could gather and connect.

Of course, Starbucks also became one of the most successful coffee chains in the world because it made buying coffee remarkably convenient. They built stores everywhere. The company’s mobile app allowed customers to order ahead and grab their drinks without waiting. That’s great if you’re trying to get to work or rushing between appointments. It also happened to be essential during Covid, when hanging around in stores just wasn’t something people did.

The problem is that Starbucks increasingly designed its stores around the idea that what people just wanted was coffee. It optimized its stores around everything but the experience.