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Roblox and Discord are being sued by the mother of a 15-year-old boy who died by suicide after allegedly being targeted by an adult sex predator posing as a child on the platforms. A wrongful death lawsuit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court by Becca Dallas, according to The New York Times. Her son, Ethan Dallas, joined the online gaming platform Roblox with his parents approval and with parental controls in place. At age 12, he was allegedly targeted by an online predator posing as a child named Nate, now believed to be 37-year-old Timothy OConnor, per The Times. Their conversations moved to Discord and turned sexual in nature, with Nate threatening Ethan into sharing sexually explicit images. Tragically, Ethan was permanently harmed and haunted by these experiences, and he died by suicide at the age of 15, the complaint said. His mother, Becca, is seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages. The lawsuit highlights a long-standing danger of online spaces, particularly those targeted at children but where adults are also able to hang around. The complaint argues that if either platform had enforced more stringent safety protocols, Ethan would have never interacted with this predator, never suffered the harm that he did, and never died by suicide. A Roblox spokesperson told Fast Company in an emailed statement that the company was deeply saddened by this tragic loss but could not comment on active litigation. “Safety is a top priority,” the statement continued, “and we are continually innovating new safety featuresover 100 this year alonethat protect our users and empower parents and caregivers with greater control and visibility. Roblox said it has introduced several tools designed to better protect its young users, including an age-estimation feature set to roll out platform-wide by years end. The spokesperson added: Our policies are purposely stricter than those found on other platforms, including limiting chat for younger users, not allowing sharing images through chat and filters designed to block the sharing of personal information. The company added that child safety online is an industry-wide issue and highlighted its partnerships with law enforcement and global child safety and mental health organizations to combat exploitation. A spokesperson for Discord told Fast Company: “Discord is deeply committed to safety and we require all users to be at least 13 to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies. We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet.” Anapol Weiss, the firm that filed Dallass suit, said this is the ninth lawsuit it has filed in connection with allegations that children were groomed, exploited, or assaulted after contact on Roblox or related platforms. “This case lays bare the devastating consequences when billion-dollar platforms knowingly design environments that enable predators to prey on vulnerable children,” said Alexandra Walsh, partner at Anapol Weiss, in a statement. “These companies are raking in billions. Children are paying the price.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Youd think it would smell like coffee. Instead, theres a faint whiff of livestock in the air. For the past hour and a half, some 14,000 Starbucks store managers have been streaming into the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, filling the arena. Even though its only noon on this June day, the music is pumping and people are dancing under purple lights. Some start a wave, which ripples through the crowd. In just a few hours, theyll sample the companys new 1971 Roast from their seats, in what has to be one of the worlds largest coffee tastings ever staged. But even the scent of those dark-roast beans cant erase the barnyard aroma from the years of rodeos that have been held in the arena. This three-day Las Vegas extravaganza, known as the Starbucks Leadership Experience, marks the companys first such event since 2019, and the excitement is high, particularly since Brian Niccol is about to give his first major address since becoming CEO last September. Lil Jons Get Low rumbles through the arena as Niccol makes his way past the crowd, shaking hands and posing for selfies like hes running for office. Soon, he takes the stage to loud applause and quickly begins laying out his vision for returning the company to its 2010s heyday, when Starbuckss stores were known as comforting coffeehouses and its stock was on a steady climb. Niccol has been giving a version of this talkpitching what he calls his Back to Starbucks planto investors and analysts for the past several months. Now, hes facing his employees. Look, were here for a simple reason, he says, surveying the audience. Okay, a really simple reason. Our future success depends on all of you in this room. That may be true, but as Niccol well knows, much of it rests on his shoulders. When Starbucks recruited Niccol from Chipotle, it appointed him both chairman and CEO and offered him nearly $100 million, including stock awards and a cash bonus, for the first four months alone on the job. (Going forward, hes eligible for at least $24 million annually in equity and pay, a third more than McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski received in 2024.) It also offered him access to the corporate jet for commuting between his home in Newport Beach, California, and Starbuckss headquarters in Seattle. (He has since acquired a local residence.) Its an extraordinary pay package that bets heavily on Niccols ability to pull the iconic coffee chain out of an unprecedented slump. After decades of stamping its siren across the globe, Starbuckss reign as the worlds leading coffee company is faltering. Its global dominanceroughly 41,000 stores worldwideis being threatened by the Chinese chain Luckin, which has some 24,000 outposts, while domestic challengers such as Blank Street, Scooters, and Dutch Bros have found footholds in being anything but another Starbucks. Starbuckss transactions peaked around 2019, according to Niccol, just before the pandemic, and its revenue is stagnating. Starbucks managed to bring in $36 billion in fiscal year 2024nearly flat with 2023by offsetting dwindling customer numbers with higher prices. Changes in leadership havent helped. Niccols predecessor, Laxman Narasimhan, lasted just 17 months as CEO, despite his endorsement by the companys legendary leader, Howard Schultz. Narasimhan was pushed out last August amid falling sales and activist campaigns by Elliott Investment Management and Starboard Value. Niccols recruitment was the last major act of now-retired board member Mellody Hobson, who was banking on his reputation as the worlds leading fast-food strategist and a digital tactician. But its also a bit of a gamble. For this brand turnaround, the master of operational efficiency needs to focus on something radically different: improving customer experience. The operational process is whats going to free us up to give a great experience again, Niccol tells me. During his six years at Chipotle, Niccol revived the chain through heretical acts within the lo-fi company: adding a second make line to service online orders, giving cooks screens to smooth out logistics, and using digital rewards to entice customers. Before that, at Yum! BrandsNiccol was chief marketing officer of Pizza Hut and then Taco Bell, eventually becoming CEO of the latterhe launched apps for both brands, bolstering their sales. At Chipotle and Yum! Brands, Niccol accelerated the shift to digital orders. But Starbucks doesnt need to digitize its operations. Today, 31% of its orders are already placed within its rewards-laden app, which is so effective that its become something of a North Star for the fast-food industry. If anything, digital orders are working too well, undermining the ecosystem of a Starbucks café. Over the past decade, Starbucks has become known for chaotic stores staffed by baristas who struggle to keep pace with orders; unpredictable waits that have made mobile ordering a defensive strategy to get your coffee on time; and cafés that offer neither the space nor seats for customers to hang out or work at their laptops. For many people, the daily ritual of a Starbucks latte no longer feels worth the (considerable) price or trouble. When the opportunity at Starbucks popped up, I spent a little bit of time looking at, ‘Okay, what makes Starbucks Starbucks?’ Niccol says. It was clear that everybody really had a connection to the experience. And unfortunately, a lot of them talked about it in the past tense. The Starbucks machine, Niccol argues, had gone too far, replacing hand-scrawled Sharpie names on cups with printed labels, overwhelming baristas so they didnt have time for human connection, and either ripping out café seats entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic or replacing them with the sort of hard, 15-minute chairs that, legend has it, Ray Kroc pioneered at McDonalds. In Starbuckss early years, Schultz borrowed from urban theorists to describe his cafés as the third place between work and home. Niccol aims to not just revive that ideabut to reconcile it with the iPhone era. Nearly a year into the job, his plans are still solidifying. He brought back the Sharpie and updated the dress codes for baristas (despite protests). Hes offering free coffee refills, and hes reintroduced the condiment bar so that customers can add cream to their coffee themselves and stopped upcharging for alt milks. (He also no longer offers free water to non-paying visitors, to discourage loitering.) Bigger changes are coming, including the redesign of 1,000 of Starbuckss 11,000 company-operated cafés in North America by the end of next year, and adding 30,000 seats back to stores over the next few years. Niccol is also planning to sunset the companys 90 or so mobile-order and pickup-only stores, which he has described as overly transactional. We were creating soulless vessels to just hand people coffee. That isnt right, says Niccol. Im going to win more drive-through and mobile orders because of the coffee experience that you have every once in a while when you sit in our café. In the restaurant industry, store redesigns are part of a proven playbook, says Bank of America senior research analyst Sara Senatore. People want to go where [other] people are, she explains. That free refll isnt just for people who get the refills, just like the seating isnt just for people who use the seating. That visual is important for everybody. Whether Niccols changes are coming quickly enough for Wall Street is another matter. For the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, Starbucks grew revenue by just 4%, while same-store sales declined by 2% in the U.S. and 2% globallymarking six quarters in a row of same-store sales declines. There are early signs of success: An increasing number of stores are seeing growth in transaction volumes; non-rewards customers are starting to return. But even Senatore, a Starbucks bull, noted on the companys April earnings call that its a little slower in terms of earnings recovery than maybe some of the previous turnarounds weve seen from you, Brian. Chipotles same-store sales had improved the quarter Niccol arrived. But with Starbucks, the challenge is more complex: No one ever cherished Chipotle for its plush seats and warm atmosphere. Mike Grams, COO of Starbucks, walks into a Starbucks bathroom and inhales, filling his nostrils like hes breathing the Alpine air of a Ricola commercial. The bathroom, thank god, smells like air freshener. Were at one of Starbuckss first redesigned stores in Bridgehampton, New York, and, alongside Meredith Sandland, Starbuckss EVP and chief coffeehouse developer, Grams is taking me on a coffeehouse walk, where he surveys the customer experience of a Starbucks. The duo, who are both just 100 days into their new roles, last worked with Niccol at Taco Bell. Niccol coaxed Grams, who had risen from store manager to COO at Taco Bell, out of retirement to help resuscitate Starbucks. (Niccol describes Grams, who brims with football coach energy, as a human quad shot.) Meanwhile, Sandland, the former chief development officer at Taco Bell, spent the past three years building ghost kitchens software at the startup Empower Delivery. When she joined Starbucks, the coffee chain licensed Empowers software and hired six of its engineers. Gramss coffeehouse walk will soon be practiced by Starbuckss 1,000 North American district managers, who visit different cafés a few days a week. On this afternoon, he begins outside the store, inspecting the Starbucks sign for bird nests. Then he walks through the space with all his senses on alert, ensuring sounds, sights, and smells layer harmoniously. Sandland notices the stores music is a bit too loud for conversation, but shes pleased to hear the coffee steam behind the counter. Grams catches a thin line of dirt piling up at the threshold of the exit door. Its easy to walk past very basic things, Grams says. Getting the store design right is another challenge. Today, most Starbucks locations are a study in stark white, black, and gray; every surface has been hardened for easy cleaning, down to the chairs. The result is a space thats fine to look at but miserable to linger in, built less to be sat in than hosed off. [Our] coffeehouse needs to be better than any living room youre in, Niccol says, citing affordable luxury as the companys new guiding principle. Its easy to see why the company chose to show off this café to me. Its cozy, with rich green walls and louvered shutters on the windows. The worn wood floor has been refinished instead of covered over with Starbuckss usual tile. Books sit on shelves. Large plants fill corners. The counter, with its drab display of sample food items, will also get an update. Grams points to the pastry case, where flat frozen croissants are presented as if for autopsy on sterile white plates. Those plates will be replaced with baskets and fluffier croissants, freshly baked in-house. The Espresso Lane: Meredith Sandland, EVP and chief coffeehouse developer,is helping Starbucks streamline operations with new software. [Photo: Jessica Chou] Under Niccol, the company is also reviving multi-zone seating, pockets that are meant to serve different purposes. Here that includes a large wooden dining room table where remote workers can use their laptops, as well as low, plush chairs for reading. Café tables, still set with those hard 15-minute seats, allow pairs of people to catch up. But in other areas, those chairs are topped with a one-inch leather cushion, making them more inviting. The biggest update may be the new padded leather bench seating. When I settle into it with my full weight, I find its both comfortable and supportive of my back. Its also great for adding seating capacity to smaller stores. Niccol has commissioned some additional furnishings. They include glasses and mugs that will nod at the siren while remaining elegant, he says, and what he calls an iconic chairsomething so comfortable and expensive it might only appear in half or two-thirds of stores, a throwback to the quirky purple Starbucks chair of the 90s. Its got to be the seat that when you walk in, youre like, Man, I cant wait for him to get up. Im hopping in that chair the second he does, Niccol says. Analysts had estimated that these redesignswhich are now debuting across New York and Los Angeles, and spreading to 1,000 stores over the next yearcould cost as much as $1 million apiece. Niccol insists thats an overestimation of what he calls a store uplift. He characterizes what hes rolling out now as cosmetic renovations, and says theyll cost around $150,000 apiece and can be accomplished over the course of a single night. (He also puts the price tag for a true store renovation at about $450,000 or less.) The effect can be contagious: Historically, even having just one fancier Starbucks café in an area has driven repeat business to half a dozen lower-touch stores in the vicinity. And improving a store experience has a rapid effect on a brands reputation. Thats why, back in 1999, Starbucks hired Ted Jacobs as an early global head of design. Hed helped reinvent retail with the launch of flagship NikeTown stores in cities around the world. But even the most enticingly redesigned stores will feel superficial if Starbucks doesnt find a solution for its biggest problem: the pool of customers hanging by the counter for their drink order, ruining any feeling of coziness. Its an issue that has plagued the company for a decade. Bill Sleeth, who was the VP of design at Starbucks under Schultz from 2010 to 2017, remembers exactly when things went awry. After the companys rapid expansion in the early 2000s, when it adopted a somewhat cookie-cutter approach to store design, Sleeth worked to infuse the cafés with more comfortable and local elements. He also introduced the high-touch Reserve and Roastery stores to bring a halo effect back to the brand. With Sleeths initial global store redesign strategy working (the companys same-store sales grew between 6% and 9% annually between 2010 and 2015), he began testing noel store layouts to help reduce the line of customers waiting to place orders. But the companys tech team had other plans. In September 2015, Starbucks launched Mobile Order and Pay nationwide. The whole thing took us by surprise, Sleeth recalls. If it had been just a few ordersjust a convenience for customersit wouldnt have been a big deal. But it completely transformed the business. Previously, every Starbucks had been designed to accommodate a winding queue in front, right before the cash register. But mobile-order pickups essentially repositioned the crowd to an ad hoc holding pen after the register. Cafés simply didnt have the space for this. So drinks piled up on counters, and customers pooled into the middle of the store. Sleeths team built little risers to hold all the drinks ready for pickup, and more recently, Starbucks updated stores to move the drink area closer to the front doors. Even so, the vibe for anyone sticking around is grim. Our stores blew up in our face. Our success became that handicap, Sleeth says. It broke us. Michelle Eisen was a Starbucks barista in Buffalo when, in 2015, she and her colleagues began affixing receipt-like stickers onto all cups instead of hand-writing names. They loathed the automation. We were resistant, she says. It seemed contradictory to the experience we were supposed to provide. In her eyes, the paradigmatic Starbucks coffeehouse disappeared along with those Sharpie-signed cups. But nearly 10 years later, Niccols mandated use of the Sharpie was, to Eisen, even worse. Head counts had been quietly cut over the yearsthe average Starbucks store had 24 employees five years ago; today, it has 18even as the drink menu became increasingly complicated. The job had gotten harder. One of Niccols first orders of business was paring back that menu, eliminating 30% of options, things like melon syrup and freeze-dried pineapple. (Though he is introducing a protein cold foam.) But Eisen says that customers still came in and asked for their old standbys, and she found it impossible to turn them down. And then, suddenly, she was supposed to pick up a Sharpie and start writing on dozens of cups per hour. Im an experienced barista, and [even] I struggled, especially during peak. If I could get a smiley on every cup, it was a huge feat, she recalls. Its awful to feel like youre doing everything in your power and youre just drowning. In May, Eisen quit her job to join the Starbucks Workers United union as a full-time organizer, helping baristas around the country join the ranks of the 12,000 employees across 620 North American stores who have voted to unionize as of time of publishing. (In addition to its 11,000 company-operated stores in the region, Starbucks has 7,000 licensed ones; the company runs just over 50% of its stores globally.) Eisen offers a counter perspective on Niccols Back to Starbucks plan, outlining how something as simple as updating the dress codefrom tops of any color with faint patterns to clean black T-shirtshad massive repercussions for employees without washing machines, who can be sent home without pay if they fail to comply (many baristas spill on themselves at least once a shift). She also points out that refusing a visitor’s request for a cup of water always ends in a fight, making a case that Niccols operational updates have largely come at the expense of the already beleaguered workforce. Indeed, after Niccol announced the dress code updates in April, the union responded with coordinated strikes across 175 stores, creating a terrible public relations moment for a company attempting a turnaround. (According to analyst firm Paragon Intel, Niccols lack of experience negotiating with unions is one of his few weak spots as a CEO: The National Labor Relations Board found Chipotle violated labor laws under his leadership by closing a store in Maine that was attempting to unionize.) Starbucks and the union are currently in stalled contract negotiations, with pay increases a sticking point. Grounds Keeper: Mike Grams joined Starbucks as COO in February to help oversee its store redesign. [Photo: Jessica Chou] Niccol seems to acknowledge his early missteps. In our conversations, he floats the idea of charging a quarter for Starbuckss triple-filtered water. He also wonders if he should have first tested the dress code at the companys new Starting Five storesfive cafés where Starbucks corporate now tries out products and ideas before releasing them more widely. But overall, he defends the moves. Ninety percent of the peoples feedback was hugely positive. The 10% that decided to be very public about their dissatisfaction got a lot of pickup, and I was surprised by that, Niccol says. But I think we made the right choice. He sees Starbuckss labor challenges as rooted in operational problems. Back-of-house updates, he argues, will buy back time and sanity for the staff and create a warmer atmosphere for customersensuring baristas have the wherewithal to provide the hospitality of remembering customers names and handing them their drinks. The companys biggest target is Sleeths former nemesis: mobile ordering, which produces a sea of tickets that can overwhelm staff. (Niccol likens this dynamic to a memorable scene from The Bear, when the kitchen at the Chicago sandwich shop is so flooded by online orders that the staff just gives up.) This September, Starbucks is rolling out new logic for Mobile Order and Pay called Smart Queue. Instead of cueing baristas to make drinks (ordered in the store and online) on a first come, first served basis, it will more intelligently prioritize orders. In-store drinks will be ready within four minutes and online orders within 12 minutes, while food and drinks will be grouped together. People ordering via the app will be able to select a pickup time for 15 minutes or further into the future, the sort of simple upgrade that will allow practical prioritization. Niccol reports that 80% of in-café orders are handed off within four minutes in stores that are already using Smart Queue. Sandland, as head of store development, is leading the project. There might be the same number of people coming in to get their drink, but if you can better match the right drink to the right person, theres going to be fewer drinks sitting on the bar and fewer people hanging around waiting, she says. Other updates include a point-of-sale terminal that lists 82% of orders as one-tap buttons on the home screen for cashiers, making it easier for them to keep things humming along. Theres even a tab for viral fan-made drinks, which Starbucks promotes through a new Secret Menu in its app. (The company scours social media for these drink ideas, tweaking recipes for scalability.) Starbucks is developing an espresso machine that pulls four shots at a time instead of three, saving 27 seconds when someone orders a quad shot, which it hopes to start rolling out next year. And its upgrading software to make it easier for managers and employees to swap shifts. Then theres the question of staffing. When I was in Las Vegas, I found myself in an elevator with two store managers. I mentioned that I was going to meet Niccol and asked if they had one design request for him. After a few moments of contemplation, one of them simply said, More staff. Niccol gets it. The fundamental fact is were going to have more people in the stores servicing customers. Theres no other solution. Its a human-to-human business. Were going to put in the additional one, two, three people. Lets just say the roster of 18 becomes 20. These hirings should take place over the next year and will cost the company roughly $500 million. To pay for them, Bank of America analyst Senatore estimates that prices will need to go up by 3% or sales will need to grow as much as 5%. Starbucks plans to offset these investments with cost savings across the company. Starbucks has also announced that it will add an assistant manager role to every store, someone promoted from within, to take pressure off managers who often spend their days off handling tasks like scheduling. When this policy was announced on stage in Vegas, the crowd of managers roared. Niccol is so confident in his vision that hes already thinking ahead to when Starbucks could more than double its global footprint, reaching 100,000 stores. He details a plan based on three store sizeswhich he laughingly calls tall, grande, and venti. (Hes especially bullish on the tall store, a cozy, cost-effective espresso bar format with approximately 10 seats; the first will open in New York City.) Most will have drive-throughs. All will have seats. Niccol also denies that Starbucks is planning to sell off its China business, saying hes keeping the stores and would like to expand to 20,000 in the country with the right partner. This expansion seems a touch quixotic when Niccol concedes that only a handful of new stores can open in North America in 2026 with dozens following in 2027, given the lead time involved with obtaining permits. And he still needs to validate his model. Hes been pulling new levers to create urgency inside the company. In July, he offered his three top executives $6 million in stock grants if they hit cost-savings targets by the end of the yearand double that if they implement his in-store policies more quickly. He also mandated that corporate employees return to office, in Seattle or Toronto, for at least four days a week by October. (Following criticism of his initial plan to work remotely from Newport Beach, Niccol now works out of the Seattle office.) Still, theres one major question looming over Niccols Back to Starbucks plan. Even if Wall Street gives him the time to revive the third place, do customers still want it? Starbucks is just one of many quick-service restaurants that have ripped out seats and opened smaller stores over the past several years. The third place didnt just die at Starbucks; its disappeared across much of our world. In the era of DoorDash and, yes, mobile ordering, customers increasingly view fast-food restaurants as vehicles for food, not ambience. To Niccol, that presents an opportunity. Thats where the value of Starbucks comes to light, because its so much more than just a cup of coffee, he says. There arent many places like this anymore. Bringing hospitality back to the hospitality industry shouldnt be a novel idea. In 2025, thats all the more reason its essential.
Category:
E-Commerce
Since 2017, Convene has been the home of the Fast Company Innovation Festival, hosting tens of thousands of attendees and hundreds of panels. And over the years, the Innovation Festival and events like it have pushed Convene’s spaces to house more than just stage conversations, but also interactive workshops, activations, and more. Recognizing the overall shifting landscape of events, Convene is announcing the creation of Convene Hospitality Group, a parent company overseeing a portfolio of brands dedicated to hosting specific types of events, including offsites and immersive experiences. Ryan Simonetti, president and CEO of CHG, says they divided the event industry into unique segments of experiences. We were like, Oh my god, you can actually build brands and products around these,'” Simonetti says. Convene and etc.venues, a group of office spaces meant for smaller meetings that Convene acquired in February 2023, currently make up 38 locations across the United States and United Kingdom. Convene and etc.venues now sit under CHG, along with a new third brand, whose name has not been announced yet, that will host immersive activations such as gala dinners, fashion shows, and brand launches. Ryan Simonetti [Photo: Studio Khonsu] Simonetti says this expansion will alleviate any latent uncertainty partners feel when they approach CHG looking to host an event, but are unsure of which kind of venue is right for their needs. At the end of the day, CHG, our mission, our vision, is to create the places and experiences that bring people together, Simonetti says. I love technology, we all do, and the flexibility that it provides us. But there’s something magical about being together with intention.” And bringing together a diverse array of attendees for insightful conversations and for purposeful networking is certainly the intention of the Innovation Festival. The central hub for the Innovation Festival is Convene Brookfield Place. And the event features high-level speakers including Jimmy Fallon, Bozoma Saint John, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, Hailee Steinfeld, Tracee Ellis Ross, professor and author Brené Brown, lead singer of OK Go Damian Kulash, and many more. New this year are experiential sessions including an immersive sound bath and an exercise in finding joy through confetti, alongside hands-on workshops and activations. Visit the Innovation Festival event page for the full agenda and get your pass today.
Category:
E-Commerce
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