Friday, January 10, 2003


thinking about starbucks

of course several people have emailed me about the recent talk-of-the-town article in the new yorker on starbucks.

i've read it several times now and have really been thinking about what i wanted to say. first, it's important to remember that starbucks isn't actually in the coffee business. if you think about it carefully, you have to be struck by the fact that they're really selling milk, flavored with different agents. syrups, sugar, cinnamon -- coffee is just another flavoring, in the structure of their current drink menu. most of their drinks have at least 2 or 3 times as much milk as coffee. . .

i'm surprised the new yorker didn't see this important fact. but putting this aside, in one respect, naturally, i'm all for starbucks. they have often improved the quality of public coffee -- restaurant, diner, fast-food coffee -- in the towns to which they come. also, they have extended the reach of coffee into several countries normally associated with tea.

finally, starbucks does buy a good amount of fair-trade and so-called "relationship" coffee, at prices that allow coffee farmers to survive. (long-time readers know all about fair-trade coffee; as for relationship coffee, here's a great example.)

those people i know who actually run small, independent, local coffeehouses, report that starbucks both helps them and hurts them. some have found success by placing their coffeehouses across the street and a block away from starbucks. since starbucks has spent the millions of dollars to research the best locations, they figure that they can pick up on that and benefit from those people who won't want to wait to cross the street on a rainy or busy day when they see another coffeehouse just down the block.

also, as the local starbucks gets busier, the lines get longer, and then people will come to the independent coffeehouse to avoid the wait. the problem for independent coffeehouse owners is that of course everyone wants to try the new starbucks. this can cut into business for a few months.

thus, you have to work very hard to distinguish your coffee and atmosphere from theirs, to tailor your products and ambiance more closely to what you know the community prefers from your longer experience living there.

if i were running a coffeehouse in new orleans, for example, to beat starbucks you'd better i'd offer specialty drinks tailored to local tastes -- maybe a very sweet "praline latte" made with a high-quality chicory coffee and a nutty syrup. or a "red velvet" latte, made with chocolate and french vanilla syrups. you get the idea.

and while starbucks generally plays that weird, lite-jazz, i'd of course play music more attuned to my demographic, as well as zydeco. i guess i might have to invent a new genre, zy-hop, for the younger crowd! a recent article on how starbucks has affected the coffee culture in lexington, ky. demonstrates all these issues.

in other respects, i don't think starbucks is a good thing for the long-term because they can't help but spread a dull sameness with their psychologically engineered corporate fake-o environments. as their roasting infrastructure gets larger and larger, they will have problems maintaining quality. and of course their famed style of roasting already turns off many -- losing quality control in this area will worsen the effect.

also, since the teens behind the starbucks counter generally don't give a hoot about quality coffee, the beverages are often poorly prepared. in time, these factors could lead to their decline and fall.

finally, i wished starbucks had maintained a vision truer to the actual italian coffee experience. but every place should create it's own coffee culture, and if starbucks establishes a baseline where none existed before -- that could be useful.

so i hope that local coffee lovers learn from strabucks, plan carefully, and then launch themselves into an effort to bring high-quality coffee to their community in a way that really touches the heart.

posted by fortune | 4:58 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments