Starbucks Brews In-House Tools in Shift From Big Tech

Starbucks is developing in-house systems that could replace software it buys from Big Tech companies, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (July 9).

The coffee chain is working on alternatives to a system from Microsoft that monitors inventory as well as a maintenance management tool from IBM , the report said, citing an internal presentation. Starbucks has also been working for several years on creating a point-of-sale system that would replace Oracle Simphony , according to the report.

The moves are part of a larger shift happening in the business world. “For two decades, buying enterprise software meant accepting a vendor’s feature set, paying per seat and hiring specialists to manage the platform,” PYMNTS reported Wednesday (July 8). “For small businesses, that model often meant paying for capabilities they never used. AI coding tools are changing that calculation.” Five startups and small companies with staff ranging from 20 to 70 people switched from working with Salesforce and HubSpot in the last six months, turning instead to in-house applications built using AI tools from Anthropic , Lovable and Replit . These businesses reduced software costs by 40% to 80%. Research and advisory firm Gartner found that up to $234 billion of enterprise application software spending will be exposed to agentic arbitrage by the end of 2030, or roughly 20% of all enterprise software-as-a-service spending.