Not to make it equivalent but in Japan and other places people get their coffee from cans. All they want is a little pick me up routine in the morning or whenever.
I pay €29K (gotta love the exchange rate, right now) for a machine which will replace a worker that I probably pay for year the same service. Sure it's not "artisanal" but, given enough time to tweak the machine's behaviours, it could be.
For the lower-end markets, definitely, it would be a god-send (in the ROI sense); however, I think your arguments of dissuasion that Starbucks would never do this are akin to the arguments of high-end car manufacturers never moving to automation to build vehicles.
Put succinctly: If the end-goal of business is to increase the profit-marigin (which it is), then someone, somewhere will find a way to make that happen and this would be, in general, no exception to that rule. Eventually, they'll hit that sweet spot to make it work; even if it's slightly sub-par from the quality of today's product.
Starbucks really muddled the waters during their rapid expansion about which customer they‘re targeting, and at some point they will be forced to pick.
That’s a pretty bold assertion. It seems to be doing just fine without having been automated.
Then they decided that moving into every big box store and rest stop was important.
You need to keep the premium that Starbucks customers pay for and that is using traditional methods with lots of customization options. Making coffee at Starbucks is sort of a performance, and that is remaining because that is what people are paying for.
You are misunderstanding Starbuck and the premium coffee experience completely.
I think that something like this will succeed at the medium-high end. But "artisan" premium coffee that is hand made at an espresso machine will remain but it will likely get even more expensive.
Remember that we have already automated pretty fully the low end coffee market with Nespresso, Kurig, etc.
I think you are completely wrong, there is a market for this.