Starbucks POS Glitch Disables POS at Thousands of Stores

4/28/2015
Company-owned Starbucks stores in the U.S. and Canada suffered a point-of-sale outage on Friday, April 24. The company released a statement saying that the glitch was caused by a failure during a daily system refresh and assured customers it was not the result of an external breach. The outage also affected the company’s Evolution Fresh and Teavana stores. 

According to an Associated Press story, the glitch that disabled registers served as a reminder of how dependent restaurants are upon these systems that run increasingly sophisticated operations. They process credit cards, send orders to computer screens in kitchens and help run loyalty programs.

The AP story reminds that while registers once merely rang up tabs and stored cash they have evolved into hubs that can collect enormous volumes of data and carry out many tasks. The register malfunction that forced Starbucks to close stores last week affected all company-owned stores, or more than 60 percent of roughly 13,500 locations in the U.S. and Canada.
X
This ad will auto-close in 10 seconds