• Starbucks' largest workers' union announced that it would begin an escalating strike on Friday.
• The union first announced a work stoppage in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago before expanding.
• The union said it was protesting Starbucks' labor practices and wages.

Starbucks' largest workers union announced that it would go on strike in cities nationwide, including Seattle, where it is headquartered, just days before Christmas.

Baristas from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle were the first to announce their strike. On Saturday, a union representative confirmed to Business Insider that additional workers from Columbus, Denver, and Pittsburgh had joined the labor stoppage.

"We've been in contract negotiations with Starbucks for several months now, and things have been going smoothly up until this point — when they have now refused to offer us a viable economic package," Shay Mannik, a barista in Denver who is on strike after working at Starbucks for two years, told Business Insider. "They just have not been offering us anywhere close to a living wage."

In a statement made on the union's X account, Starbucks Workers United said the strike would "escalate each day through Christmas Eve... unless Starbucks honors our commitment to work towards a foundational framework."

On Wednesday, the union told BI that it would strike to protest what it described as the company's failure to negotiate a sufficiently comprehensive pay package and hundreds of unresolved cases related to labor disputes.

"Starbucks baristas are going on five days of escalating ULP strikes in response to the company backtracking on our promised path forward, starting tomorrow in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle," Starbucks Workers United said in Thursday statements.

It added that the strikes would soon be "coast-to-coast."

The union said the strikes could reach hundreds of stores unless the company works to achieve collective bargaining agreements.

The company has 11,161 self-operated stores and 7,263 licensed stores in North America. As of October, about 500 — or about 4.5% — of all stores were unionized.

"It's been really reassuring seeing a lot of our community members and the customers coming to support us," Diego Franco, a barista in the Chicago area who has worked at the coffee giant for over five years, told BI. "We've had a lot of our regulars come by, drop off supplies, drop off food, and stuff to help keep us warm."

In a Thursday post on Instagram, the union said, "Since February, Starbucks has repeatedly pledged publicly that they intended to reach contracts by the end of the year - but they've yet to present workers with a serious economic proposal."

Starbucks said in a public statement that the union delegates "prematurely ended" the bargaining session this week and that it was "disappointing they didn't return to the table given the progress we've made to date."

"We are ready to continue negotiations to reach agreements," the company wrote. "We need the union to return to the table."

A spokesperson for Starbucks told BI in a statement that the company "offers a competitive average pay of over $18 per hour, and best-in-class benefits."

The spokesperson said Starbucks also offers competitive benefits, including "health care, free college tuition, paid family leave, and company stock grants."

"No other retailer offers this kind of comprehensive pay and benefits package," the spokesperson added. "Workers United proposals call for an immediate increase in the minimum wage of hourly partners by 64%, and by 77% over the life of a three-year contract. This is not sustainable."

The union, which represents more than 10,000 baristas, said on Tuesday that 98% of its member baristas had voted to authorize the strike.

News of the strike came just days after CEO Brian Niccol announced a change in the company's parental leave policy for US store employees.

Starting in March, Starbucks will offer up to 18 weeks of paid leave for birth parents and up to 12 weeks for nonbirth parents. The company currently offers US store employees six weeks of paid parental leave and up to 12 weeks unpaid. The increased benefit will apply to employees averaging at least 20 weekly work hours.

• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol has talked about improving conditions for baristas.
• A potential strike at some Starbucks stores represents a test on that front for the new CEO.
• Niccol has made some operational changes, but Starbucks Workers United wants better pay.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol has talked about improving working conditions for the company's baristas.

Now, as thousands of them prepare for a potential strike, Niccol faces a test of that commitment.

Baristas who are part of Starbucks Workers United, which represents about 10,000 Starbucks workers in the US, voted to authorize a strike, the union said on Tuesday. About 98% of members voted in favor of action, though they haven't selected a walkout date, according to the union.

The union said Tuesday that it's focused on winning better raises for its members. It also wants to resolve hundreds of unfair labor practice charges, or ULPs, filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

The contract negotiations predate Niccol's arrival at Starbucks in September. Starbucks and the union have been at odds for three years. The first Starbucks store to unionize — a location in Buffalo, New York — was organized in 2021. The parties restarted talks in April after about a year of no meetings and have struck agreements on some provisions of the contract.

Starbucks and union representatives continued to bargain on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United told Business Insider.

"It is disappointing that the union is considering a strike rather than focusing on what have been extremely productive negotiations," Starbucks spokesperson Phil Gee said. "Since April, we've scheduled and attended more than eight multi-day bargaining sessions where we've reached thirty meaningful agreements on dozens of topics Workers United delegates told us were important to them, including many economic issues."

Since becoming Starbucks CEO, Niccol has said he sees opportunities to improve some operational aspects of baristas' working conditions as part of a broader push to revitalize sales. In an open letter in his first week as leader, he said the company would focus on "empowering our baristas to take care of our customers" and that he wanted to make it "the best place to work, with career opportunities and a clear path to growth."

Some Starbucks workers have told BI that their stores are understaffed, including during some of the busiest times of the day, such as the morning and after-school rushes. Other workers have said that Starbucks' frequent promotions for app users result in a crush of mobile orders that they struggle to prepare in just a few minutes.

Niccol's early actions at Starbucks have included fixes to some of those issues, such as rolling back the frequency of promotions and adjusting staffing, he said on an earnings call in October. Starbucks also plans to bring back self-service milk and other condiments at its stores in 2025 to lighten some of the barista load.

One sign of progress came on Monday, when Starbucks said it would offer employees up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave — triple its current benefit of six weeks. Employees represented by Starbucks Workers United had previously proposed doubling the paid time off for parents.

On Tuesday, Starbucks Workers United said that the company had yet to agree to make changes to other aspects of workers' jobs. The union represents baristas at about 500 Starbucks stores.

"It's time to finalize a foundational framework that includes meaningful investments in baristas and to resolve unfair labor practice charges," Silvia Baldwin, a Starbucks barista in Philadelphia barista and bargaining delegate, said on Tuesday.

Starbucks spokesperson Gee said: "We remain committed to working together and committed to reaching a final framework agreement. This is our goal."

Do you work at Starbucks and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• Starbucks' biggest workers union on Tuesday went forward to authorize a nationwide strike.
• It said that the coffee chain had not settled hundreds of unfair labor practice cases.
• Starbucks said that the union considering a strike was "disappointing."

Starbucks Workers United, the coffee chain's largest union, said workers have authorized a nationwide strike.

The union, which represents more than 10,000 baristas, said in statements on Tuesday that 98% of its member baristas had voted to strike. The group was set to meet with Starbucks later that day for a final round of bargaining.

The union told CNBC in a statement that the strike was prompted by hundreds of unfair labor practice cases that Starbucks had not settled. It also said that the company had not brought a sufficiently comprehensive pay package to the bargaining table.

Starbucks, in a statement to CNBC, said that it was "disappointing" that the union was considering a strike "rather than focusing on what have been extremely productive negotiations."

"Since April we've scheduled and attended more than eight multi-day bargaining sessions where we've reached thirty meaningful agreements on dozens of topics Workers United delegates told us were important to them, including many economic issues," the company told CNBC.

Starbucks has 11,161 company-operated stores and 7,263 licensed stores in North America. As of October, 500 — or about 4.5% — of all stores were unionized.

More than 150 unionized stores went on strike in June 2023 to protest what the union called the company's "hypocritical treatment of LGBTQIA+ workers." A Starbucks spokesperson told BI at the time that the union was spreading "false information" about its benefits, policies, and negotiation efforts.

News of the possible union strike comes just a day after CEO Brian Niccol announced a change in the company's parental leave policy for US store employees.

Starting in March, Starbucks will offer up to 18 weeks of paid leave for birth parents and up to 12 weeks for nonbirth parents. The company currently offers US store employees six weeks of paid parental leave and up to 12 weeks unpaid.

The increased benefit will apply to employees averaging at least 20 hours of work a week.

"Our benefit was already the best in retail, but after hearing from some partners who shared the leave as new parents wasn't adequate, we reviewed the program and have decided we're making a change," Niccol wrote in his announcement Monday.

Starbucks had a lackluster fourth quarter. On October 29, it posted a 7% decline in comparable sales from last year, including a 6% drop at its US stores. Sales in China declined 14% in the same period.

Its net revenue was down 3% from last year, to $9.1 billion.

The company's stock is down about 1.7% since the start of the year.

Representatives of Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United did not respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

• Starbucks is expanding its paid parental leave policy for baristas, the latest change under its new CEO.
• It'll offer up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave for birth parents and 12 weeks for nonbirth parents.
• However, baristas will reportedly get smaller raises this year due to the company's performance.

Starbucks is giving baristas up to three times the paid parental leave they previously had access to.

Starting in March, the coffeehouse giant said it will offer up to 18 weeks of paid leave for birth parents and up to 12 weeks for nonbirth parents.

The expanded benefit applies to US store employees averaging at least 20 hours of work a week. In general, Starbucks' parental leave policy applies to parents welcoming children by birth, foster placement, or adoption.

The company currently offers US store employees 6 weeks of paid parental leave and up to 12 weeks unpaid.

"Our benefit was already the best in retail, but after hearing from some partners who shared the leave as new parents wasn't adequate, we reviewed the program and have decided we're making a change," the chain's new CEO, Brian Niccol, wrote in his announcement Monday.

The expansion is the latest change amid Starbucks' turnaround effort under Niccol, who took over in September after leading Chipotle, which offers its workers up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Starbucks retail employees trying to unionize at various stores across the country have named increased parental leave as one of their requests.

Starbucks Workers United said its union partners had put forth a bargaining proposal seeking to double parental leave. "We are proud of this victory for all baristas," Starbucks Workers United partner Michelle Eisen said in a statement.

It's been a tough year for the chain, which saw sales decline in multiple quarters. In its fiscal fourth quarter, the company reported its steepest quarterly sales drop in four years.

On the heels of the company's disappointing quarterly reports, baristas will reportedly get smaller raises this year compared to last and many corporate employees will only get 60% of their bonuses, Bloomberg recently reported. Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shortly after becoming CEO, Niccol, whose pay package includes up to $113 million in total compensation, wrote an open letter about his plan to improve the business.

"A visit to Starbucks is about connection and joy, and of course great coffee. Many of our customers still experience this magic every day, but in some places — especially in the U.S. — we aren't always delivering," he wrote. "It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better."

• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol aims for a brewed cup of coffee to take less than 30 seconds to prepare.
• He told ABC that the coffee chain will be "hitting pause" on increasing prices for this fiscal year.
• Starbucks plans to enhance mobile orders and transparency around pricing, Niccol said.

Starbucks' new CEO, Brian Niccol, says he hopes customers will one day be able to get a brewed cup of coffee in less than 30 seconds.

In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, the coffee boss said he wants to prioritize speed while also saying that there would be no more price rises for the time being.

Niccol's vision for what Starbucks will look like in five years' time includes a more efficient mobile order business with its own pick-up area.

"You're going to have an experience where when you walk in and you interact with the barista, it's going to be really quick for that brewed cup of coffee," he told ABC. "My hope is we can get you a brewed cup of coffee in less than 30 seconds."

Niccol joined Starbucks as its CEO in September after spending six years at the helm of Chipotle.

Unlike Chipotle, which announced menu price increases of about 2% on Wednesday, Niccol said: "The approach we've taken right now is we're going to hit the pause button on any pricing for this fiscal year."

"I still think there's an opportunity for us to simplify the pricing architecture right now — I don't love the fact that in our app right now, while you're doing this customization, it doesn't inform you what has happened to the price, so I want to get more transparent with the pricing," he said on GMA.

Niccol also said Starbucks would bring back some old staples like the Sharpies used to write names on cups and the coffee condiment bar.

The coffee chain CEO explained that they're investing in technology to provide more accurate times about when drinks will be ready for customers.

"We've got a lot of offerings that there's just one or two of these ordered a day," he said.

"The way I talk about it is, we're going to do fewer things, but we're going to do fewer things better."

Spotify Wrapped arrived on Wednesday, packaged in its usual neon, Instagram-ready glory.

The annual release dominates social-media posts for a day, but beneath the colorful cards (designed to be bespoke but distributed en masse), it's Spotify's brag about the amount of data the company has collected on you, mirrored back in a way that's meant to make surveillance sexy, silly, and shareable.

In recent Decembers, the wrap-ification of our data has spread beyond Spotify. Apple Music, Spotify's main competitor, now has a similar feature called Replay, unveiling this year's version on Tuesday. Starbucks has sent out emails telling people about their favorite beverages and number of store visits, shocking some with exactly how many dozens of Frappuccinos they bought. Duolingo kicked off the Wrapped season earlier this week, showing people how many mistakes they made while trying to learn a new language. The British supermarket chain Tesco has sent Clubcard members a review of what they bought in recent years, called Unpacked. And on Tuesday, Tinder hosted a Year in Swipe party, where it revealed the top trends in online dating the app gleaned from its broad swath of 50 million monthly users, which included people getting specific about what kind of person they're looking for or putting a hand emoji in their bios to indicate they're searching for real connections.

All this is getting weird. The type of lattes we drink and the music we listen to are things we fundamentally know about ourselves. The most common names of men and women on Tinder (Alexes and Daniels dominated among men, Marias and Lauras women) tell us nothing about how to find love. But these year-in-review trends still catch avid attention and, in turn, provide free advertising for companies when they're reshared. About an hour after Spotify unveiled this year's Wrapped, its market cap reached $100 billion for the first time. Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.

"People are so excited about seeing data collected from them and then being shown back to them in a way that feels meaningful and relatable," Taylor Annabell, a researcher with Utrecht University who has studied the Wrapped phenomenon, said. "Wrapped taps into this belief we have that data is meaningful and that we want to see it because it helps us understand ourselves."

Wrapped 2024 included the usual unveiling of top songs and artists, but Spotify has added a "Wrapped AI podcast," which features two voicebot hosts chatting through your listening habits without really saying much about the songs, in particular. There was also a section picking apart how listening styles changed over different months of the year. For me, that meant going from "van life folkie indie" to "mallgoth permanent wave punk," mildly embarrassing phrases that might describe my musical tastes from a distance but tell me little new about myself.

Of course, Spotify can't capture everything about your tastes — maybe you played a vinyl record on repeat or shared a streaming account with someone in your family. ("It's not me who can't stop listening to Chumbawamba. It's my cousin, I swear!") Maybe you opted for a mysterious approach and kept your Tinder bio short and sweet.

But where data is lacking, some have set out to create it themselves. Wrapped content has proved so effective and viral on social media that people have taken to making up new categories, packaged parts of their lives not captured by apps, and turned it over to their followers. Here, at least, these people get to curate their experiences and post them as they wish. Last December and already this week, some people took to TikTok to talk through how many first dates they went on during the course of a year, using cute and colorful slideshows to walk their users through their year of bad dates, situationships, and ghosting. A third-party project called Vantezzen takes TikTok data and generates a Wrapped-like analysis for those who want to know how many minutes they spent doom scrolling.

All this comes as people have largely thrown up their hands and given in to sharing their data with their apps. Companies have "gotten us to move past just accepting that they are spying on us to celebrating it," said Evan Greer, the director of the digital-rights advocacy group Fight for the Future and a vocal opponent of Spotify who released an album called "Spotify Is Surveillance" in 2021. "That's the shift we're seeing with this explosion of these types of year-end Wrapped viral gimmicks," Greer added. "They're actually about hypernormalizing the fact that the online services that we use know so very much about us."

Tinder's year in review looked at data from profiles in the US and globally and its own survey results, determining the most popular love languages and zodiac signs, the fastest-growing words mentioned in bios (freak, pickleball, and finance all soared this year), and how people like to communicate (ironically, "better in person" won out over the messaging app). It also created an interactive vision-board feature for people to set intentions for their 2025 dating plans. The company's in-person Year in Swipe party was held in a moody Manhattan bar, where attendees could make charm bracelets or have a tarot-card reading, and each sported a button designed to correspond with their dating vibe, like a black cat or delusional. Tinder did not respond to a request for comment about whether people could opt out of being used in the aggregate data.

But Spotify, in particular, wants to tell its users more about themselves throughout the year. In September 2023, the company began making "daylists," or curated playlists released multiple times throughout the day. While they don't come with the sharable, flashy cards to post on Instagram, they're given catchy names that hint at something about you, changing several times a day. Just this week, Spotify has dubbed me a "Laurel Canyon hippie" and crafted a vibe for a "yearning poetry Tuesday afternoon."

The daylists feel like Spotify's attempt to take the Wrapped success "to the next level," said Nina Vindum Rasmussen, a fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science who worked on the Spotify research with Annabell. It's "data fiction that accompanies people throughout the day," she said, adding: "What does it mean for them to have this mirror constantly shoved in their face?"

Most of us have gotten comfortable with — or at least resigned to — the fact that Big Tech is watching our every move. Wrapped season is a shiny reminder of all we've done, seemingly in private, on our phones. But don't count on your friends to stop sharing their elite spot as a 0.05% top listener of Taylor Swift anytime soon.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

A ransomware attack on supply chain software giant Blue Yonder continues to cause disruption to the company’s customers, almost two weeks after the outage first began. In a brief update to its cybersecurity incident page on Sunday, Arizona-based Blue Yonder said it is making “good progress” in its recovery from the attack, which hit its […]

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• To find the best hot chocolate, I tried Starbucks, Peet's, Coffee Bean, Dunkin', and Krispy Kreme.
• Starbucks' cocoa had notes of smooth dark chocolate, while Coffee Bean's was thicker and sweeter.
• Here's the best hot chocolate from a national coffee chain and why.

The end of the year is upon us, and with it comes the cool winter months, which means it's time to ditch my regular order of iced coffee in favor of a warmer drink. For those of us trying desperately to cut back on caffeine, the humble classic hot chocolate is a top-tier choice. 

If you're not looking to make it yourself at home with the best store-bought hot cocoa — in which case the runaway winner, in my opinion, is Nestlé's oft-overlooked Abuelita Mexican Hot Chocolate — or boldly starting from scratch using a celebrity chef's recipe, it's quick and easy to visit a national coffee chain for a sip of the iconic cold-weather drink. 

I like my hot chocolate rich, but not overly sweet, with a creamy milk base. It should be topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings or, even better, a marshmallow. So I tried five national coffee chains in search of the cup that felt the most like a warm hug, hitting all the luxurious chocolate notes one craves without being a one-note sugar bomb.

What I found may reveal my status as a basic coffeehouse lurker, but I stand by my assessment. You'll have to try for yourself, but here are the five cups of hot chocolate from each coffee chain, ranked from worst to best:

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

In defense of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, they have plenty of drinks and snacks on their menu that taste good. Their Black Forest blended drink beats out Starbucks' menu of Frappucinos any way of the week. But their cocoa isn't one I'd revisit — though other members of my household disagree, so, as always, your mileage may vary.

A barista at a local branch told me that The Coffee Bean's $4.25 cup of hot chocolate defaults to using nonfat milk, mixed with chocolate powder, and topped with simple whipped cream. 

But somehow, this hot cocoa had a much thicker consistency than the others, coating my mouth with a cloyingly sweet chocolate flavor that tasted like a glass of melted Cadbury milk chocolate.

While I could see someone with a sweeter tooth than mine — which is admittedly hard to come by — enjoying the taste, I couldn't take more than a sip or two.

Peet's Coffee

I had hoped for more from Peet's Coffee, expecting a velvety, diner-style cup of cocoa from the smaller chain, but what I got was just fine. Average. Plain.

I watched as my barista emptied a nondescript brown pouch of chocolate powder into a cup, adding warm 2% milk, and stirring the mixture with a spoon before topping it with canned whipped cream and handing it to me.

Tied with Starbucks as the most expensive offering at $4.45, the hot chocolate I got from Peet's Coffee offered less flourish than I would have made myself at home. 

While slightly sweeter than the cocoa at Starbucks and Krispy Kreme, Peet's Coffee's hot chocolate had a simple, inoffensive flavor — but there was nothing special about it. 

Dunkin'

Notably, the Dunkin' I visited had the friendliest staff, but that didn't impact the flavor of its hot chocolate, and let's be honest — the cocoa was mid (because Dunkin' stays average.)

The barista at the doughnut empire said the ubiquitous East Coast chain defaulted to using hot water instead of milk in its $3.69 cup of cocoa. And while Dunkin' was the only chain to offer a much-appreciated topping to accompany the whipped cream — mocha-syrup drizzle — I could tell the drink's base was made without milk. 

It also nearly burned my tongue and was far and away the hottest cup of chocolate of the day.

Without the dairy, Dunkin' hot chocolate was noticeably less creamy, though it had an intense chocolate flavor — a likely benefit of the mocha syrup on top. 

Krispy Kreme

As a chain I rarely visit, Krispy Kreme surprised me by coming in second place for its overall flavor. 

At $3.55, the doughnut chain's midsize cocoa was less expensive than the other major hot chocolate movers, but it rose above almost all of them by using a Ghirardelli powder base with steamed 2% milk.

It was served warm, not hot, and included whipped cream but not sprinkles or drizzle.

Krispy Kreme's cocoa had no frills, but offered more nuanced flavor than Peet's, Dunkin', and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf without having quite the complexity that Starbucks does.

Starbucks

I didn't want Starbucks to win — and I say that as a gold-level rewards-card member who believes in, and even evangelizes about, the value of the omnipresent coffee chain. But I wanted a dark horse contender to rise through the ranks to cinch the top spot; I wanted to be proven wrong.

I suppose I didn't want the answer to be that basic, but, alas, Starbucks made me the best cup of hot cocoa of all five I tried.

While pricey at $4.45 for a 16oz drink after tax, I guess the offering coming from the biggest US coffee chain should be the best.

Starbucks' cocoa is made, by default, with steamed whole milk mixed with house-made mocha syrup, then topped with whipped cream. Though notably missing any unique toppings such as a chocolate syrup swirl or marshmallow, which would undoubtedly heighten the experience, this hot chocolate was rich and creamy without being too sweet.

The drink had some back-end bitter notes that I could see making my opinion controversial, but having a more complex flavor made Starbucks' hot cocoa more enjoyable than the others.

Editor's note: This story was originally published in November 2023.

The Arizona-based firm said it has "no timeline" for restoration, following a cyberattack that caused disruption at companies around the world.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• Starbucks' payment and scheduling system has been hit with a ransomware attack.
• The coffee company issued guidance for workers about how to handle pay disruptions caused by the outage.
• The outage at Blue Yonder, which makes the software, also impacted grocery stores and Fortune 500 firms.

The software company behind Starbucks' payment and scheduling system has been experiencing a dayslong ransomware attack, causing outages that are disrupting employee pay.

The attack on Blue Yonder, the company that makes the software, began on November 21 and has caused outages in Starbucks's system for tracking employee hours and payments.

According to documents reviewed by Business Insider, Starbucks has issued guidance to its employees about how to handle pay disruptions caused by the Blue Yonder outage. Starbucks told its employees that payment for the period ending on November 17 would be unaffected, but there may be discrepancies in the following pay period.

"We will ensure partners who receive less than their worked hours or intended sick and/or vacation time will be paid correctly, as soon as possible," the internal documents read.

The outage has forced employees to track their shifts using pens and paper, according to Bloomberg.

The documents viewed by BI indicate that employees who are missing pay from their checks should notify their store managers as soon as possible. Any underpayment will be resolved in the next pay period. Any payment overages resulting from an employee being paid for a scheduled shift from November 18 through November 24 that they did not report to work for will not be required to be paid back, the documents say.

A Starbucks partner in the South said their manager told them on Monday that employees who had paid time off planned for the affected weeks won't be paid for that time until the outage has been fixed.

That's "potentially very bad for some partners taking vacation around the holidays," the partner told Business Insider.

A spokesperson for Starbucks told Business Insider that the company is working to ensure its partners are paid for their hours worked with limited disruption, and indicated the outage has not disrupted customer-facing technology or service in any of its locations.

Blue Yonder's software is also used by major grocery store chains and Fortune 500 firms, CNN reported.

Similar cyber attacks have previously left companies like Sony and car dealerships across America using pen and paper for administrative tasks and sales transactions.

"Blue Yonder experienced disruptions to its managed services hosted environment, which was determined to be the result of a ransomware incident," a spokesperson for the company told Business Insider in a statement. "Since learning of the incident, the Blue Yonder team has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress in their recovery process. We have implemented several defensive and forensic protocols."

The software company does not currently have a timeline for resolution of the issue, according to a webpage the company has published for customers impacted by the attack.

• CEOs at top companies have gone to the shop floor to learn more about their businesses.
• Laxman Narasimhan did time as a barista while running Starbucks, and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky was a host.
• Here's what they learned from going undercover.

When Kelly Ortberg became Boeing CEO in October, he issued a rallying cry for company leaders: Get back on the factory floor.

He's not the only leader who thinks bosses are too far from the coal face.

Some executives have said those who regularly spend time on the shop floor have a greater understanding of their business and what pain points need fixing.

These CEOs have all gone undercover to either discreetly serve customers or experience service themselves. This is what they learned from it about their businesses.

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, drove and delivered for Uber Eats in 2022

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi spent time picking up shifts as an Uber Eats delivery driver on an e-bike and an Uber driver for a spell in 2022.

He bought a secondhand Tesla Model Y to ferry riders around San Francisco and made deliveries using the alias "Dave K." He did this when the company was struggling with recruitment.

Khosrowshahi told The Wall Street Journal in April 2023 he was surprised how passengers would often discuss personal or sensitive information as if he wasn't there. While making deliveries on an e-bike, he encountered "tip-baiting," where customers offer a big tip but reduce it on delivery.

The experience showed him that the company culture was focused on customers and not drivers. "We didn't take pride in the driver product because very few of us drove," he said.

Khosrowshahi shared his findings at a companywide all-hands titled "Why we suck."

He said the meeting wasn't "pleasant" but that it led to a shift, telling the Journal, "We started celebrating employees going out there delivering, employees driving. It is a point of pride for employees now — when they drive they get a little badge on their corporate profile."

Laxman Narasimhan, former CEO of Starbucks, picked up a half-day barista shift once a month

Laxman Narasimhan said he spent six months immersing himself in all aspects of the company, including training as a barista, before taking over from Howard Schultz as Starbucks CEO.

When he took over the job, Narasimhan said he planned to continue working monthly half-day shifts.

In his first annual letter to staff in March 2023, Narasimhan said he wanted the practice to help "keep us close to the culture and our customers, as well as to our challenges and opportunities."

"I expect each member of the leadership team to also ensure our support centers stay connected and engaged in the realities of our stores for discussion and improvement," he added.

During his barista shifts, he burned his hand on a sandwich and had an egg bite explode in front of a customer. This prompted him to make several key changes, including sending more breakfast sandwiches to stores to avoid shortages, making packaging for egg bites easier to open, and sending fewer corporate emails to stores.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, spent 6 months living in Airbnbs — and became a host

In 2022, Brian Chesky said he spent six months living full-time as a guest in a series of Airbnbs to promote remote work.

The Airbnb CEO last year told Fortune the experience varied greatly from place to place: some hosts would request he pay "giant" cleaning fees, and others handed him a chore list.

"I started noticing variability," he said. "I'd ask them, 'Why are you doing all of this?'"

After Chesky's Airbnb stays, he launched 50 features, Fortune reported, including Airbnb Rooms — individual rooms to rent instead of whole homes.

To promote these listings, Chesky put a guest room in his own San Francisco home on the app for free, from 2022 to March 2023. While the listing is no longer accepting guests, some of those who did get the opportunity in 2023 left glowing reviews.

"I feel like I'm reviewing Steve Jobs' personal iPhone," one guest wrote in a review praising Chesky for facilitating "a smooth check-in."

Tony Xu, CEO of DoorDash, makes monthly food deliveries

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu makes monthly deliveries as part of WeDash, a program begun in 2015 that requires salaried employees to carry out several deliveries a year.

Xu told "The Rideshare Guy" podcast last year that it had sparked ideas for improvement. He said the company had a Slack channel dedicated to issues people identify from WeDash, such as app bugs or getting the wait times for deliveries wrong.

Xu also said it helped him and his employees solve problems, in an interview on Stanford Graduate School of Business's "View From The Top" podcast in 2021.

"If you're at the surface level, you're never going to actually realize what the problems are," he said.

On the podcast, he also shared that he does customer service for the company daily, which he said can sometimes shed more light on areas for improvement than data.

"Sometimes, it's really hard just looking at the data to get to the digging," he said.

During a ride covered by The Associated Press, the company's CTO and Xu's cofounder, Andy Fang got lost during one WeDash delivery after the app prompted him to go to the wrong address.

Joey Wat, CEO of Yum China, says she spends 'hours' watching customers eat

Yum China CEO Joey Wat said that she covertly hangs out at its restaurants, including KFC and Pizza Hut to watch customers eat, sometimes for up to three hours.

These stakeouts have been helpful in coming up with product ideas, Wat told the 2024 Fortune Global Forum this month. "Some things you can observe directly from the customer and sometimes talking to the store manager helps," she said.

Wat added that she noticed many young people in China ate KFC fried chicken dipped into mashed potato.

"What we can do with that insight is get rid of the bone," Wat said, adding this was the impetus for the company launching the boneless "mash potato burger" in China.