Starbucks quietly retired its AI agent just months after deployment after it miscounted coffee shop inventories and slowed down baristas

Starbucks has quietly scrapped its AI-powered inventory management system after only nine months since its deployment. 

The coffee giant confirmed to Fortune it has made an operational decision to move to a single model of counting inventory following an announcement in September to deploy its automated counting tool. 

The app, provided by NomadGo, took inventory of beverage components like milk and syrups in order to keep track of item shortages. In February, Reuters, which first reported the discontinuation of the tool this week, cited Starbucks sources who said the app often miscounted or mislabeled items, failing to identify the presence of bottles on shelves.

“We test ideas in our coffeehouses, listen closely to partner feedback, and make changes to deliver a better, more consistent experience,” a spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.

NomadGo didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Carl Addison, a Starbucks shift supervisor of nine years based in Shoreline, Wash., told Fortune the automated counting app required stores to rearrange back-of-house storage, which was a time-intensive process. The app’s inaccuracies made employees’ workflow more challenging, he said. If the system counted too much of the product, it wouldn’t send enough of a product a store was running low on. If the system counted too little, it wouldn’t ship enough of a needed product.

“It started off not particularly accurate and got less accurate over time,” Addison said.

Starbucks sent........

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