Starbucks quietly retired Automated Counting, an AI-powered inventory system built by vendor NomadGo that it had rolled out to more than 11,000 company-operated stores in the US and Canada nine months earlier as part of a chain-wide turnaround effort. Baristas and managers reported the tool routinely miscounted and mislabeled stock, confusing similar milk types, missing items during scans, and in one case failing to recognize a syrup bottle in Starbucks’ own promotional video for the tool. Starbucks had told Reuters in February 2026 that the system was improving product availability, but instructed staff to return to manual counting when it scrapped the tool in May 2026; NomadGo subsequently laid off much of its workforce.