Accidental Hedonist

I know you and I are on somewhat good speaking terms. You’re the only coffee shop open at 6am between my home and work, and your coffee doesn’t taste like ass. It’s not the best coffee, but at 6am, I can’t be choosy.

At any rate, since I am one of the few residents of Seattle that doesn’t hate you consistently, I thought that I would be the perfect person to tell you one of your biggest failures.

Your croissants? They’re fake. They’re insulting to anyone who has ever had a decent one. A good croissant should be light and airy on the inside, with a delicate, flaky, outer crust. Yours is little more than white bread, disguised like the French pastry.

I realize that you are looking for a croissant solution which provides the same croissant experience in Seattle that one can have in Miami, but the result of this provides a coffee house option which is either lazy or presumes that the regular American consumer doesn’t know what deliciousness that this little pastry can provide.

It’s a new year, Starbucks. How about we take a moment to make your coffeeshops just a little more bearable.

Look, I know you folks over at Starbucks are scrambling to find anything to grasp in order to keep yourselves relevant. But instant coffee?

The new product, called Via, will be sold at Starbucks stores in packs of three for $2.95 and packs of 12 for $9.95, according to the Wall Street Journal. Customers can “brew” the coffee by emptying the granules into hot water.

Really? Is that the best you can come up with? Wasn’t the point of Starbucks, way back in the day some thirty years ago, was to provide an experience that was an alternative to the instant-coffee culture that affected America back then?

And even if your new instant coffee is a “transformational product” (a phrase so loaded with PR embellishment, that it’s comical), it still doesn’t address the core issues surrounding your company, namely massive and costly expansion, and paper thin profit margins.

Or to put it another way, if roasted blends, smoothies, and breakfast foods didn’t bring them in, why should instant coffee?

Apparently one of them includes the location that I mentioned in this post.

So Starbucks essentially shut down an operating, profitably small business for absolutely no reason.

(Yeah, I realize that this post only affects about six people who read this site.)

It’s not for the taste of their coffee, which is “meh” at best.

It’s not for the fact that they sell milk shakes disguised as “morning beverages”.

It’s not even for the fact that they sell a lifestyle, more than a product.

No, what drives me crazy about Starbucks is their belief that they should be eveywhere, even if it comes at the cost of other coffee shops.

I live in West Seattle. At last count, we had close to a dozen coffee shops/places that sold espresso drinks in a three block radius. Demand is high for the dark brew and those who open a shop will and can find an market for their wares.

There have been two coffeeshops closures over the past year. One place shut down because they were in a bad location and marketed themselves equally poor (it was sort of a bike-shop/coffee shop that I never quite understood). I did not know the owners of this location at all

I did know of the owners of the second coffeeshop that had closed. My roommate knew them better than I and it is through her that I found out this story. Consider this story anecdotal as I have no firsthand account of either side of the story. I’ll leave it up to you if this is plausible, let alone accurate.

About a year ago, they had purchased an established coffeeshop called Infinity Espresso. Their location was at a small plaza is anchored by a drug store at one end, and a Safeway supermarket at the other. The rest of the plaza is peppered with the types of stores that one often finds in these locations – a smoke shop, a UPS store, a nail salon.

This coffeeshop wasn’t as popular as the other nearby locations, but it did bring in money, and the owners were satisfied with their investment. They could clearly pay their lease and still have enough to make a small living off of the place.

Fast forward a year to the current day. Starbucks is now in the location where this small business once occupied. So what happpened?

Important to note in all of this are the two new shopping centers being built in the area. The land in the area has clearly raised in value and no doubt that commercial space in any of nearby locations has also gone up in cost.

But an inability to pay the higher costs wasn’t what forced Infinity Espresso out. Starbucks, was simply willing to pay more than the going rate. When Infinity Espressos lease came up for renewal, the management of the plaza simply chose to not re-sign them. They kicked out Infinity and put in a Starbucks.

A year ago, out of the dozen or so coffeeshops, there was only a small presence by Starbucks, a tiny little stand at the Safeway.

Now they have three locations, with their third location taking over a spot already established by a smaller operator.

Dont’ get me wrong, I blame the plaza Management as well. But it seems as if there was some collusion between Starbucks and the plaza prior to the end of Infinity’s lease.

And that what sucks about the whole thing.

Because even if you’re moderately successful, and have set your business up in a location where high growth is expected over the coming years, it doesn’t guarantee anything. It seems as if there’s nothing preventing a multi-national corporation from coming in and making promises of higher leases and/or extended contract lengths, not to mention selling the plaza management of the “value added” of having said multi-national parking themselves in the plaza.

So now, instead of a local small business being given the opportunity to become really popular, we have a plaza increasing their value by a small percentage, Starbucks adding yet another store to the thousands that already exist, and one small business owner kicked to the curb – simply because they were in a space that Starbucks wanted for themselves.

Explain to me how Starbucks are the good guys again? Because right now, I only see yet another corporate bully.

It all started with a leaked memo.

In the aforementioned memo, Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz stated the following:

Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.

…and later:

when we went to automatic espresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines. This specific decision became even more damaging when the height of the machines, which are now in thousands of stores, blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista.

(snip)

Clearly we have had to streamline store design to gain efficiencies of scale and to make sure we had the ROI on sales to investment ratios that would satisfy the financial side of our business. However, one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store. Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee.

The response to this memo from coffee fans throughout the States was a resounding “No kidding!!”

The media’s response? Well the Washington Post had a headline that posed the question Is Malaise Brewing at Starbucks? An LA Times op-ed stated it clearly when they said Expanding too far too fast can turn companies from offbeat to bland.

Personally, I don’t think that Starbuck’s sterilization has anything to do with “too far too fast”. It’s simply the logical progression of any company’s goal of “trying please every consumer while squeezing the most profit from them”.

As an example let me bring up the two local coffee shops. From the time I enter the shop, until the time I have a drink in my hand – five minutes. This would include chatting with the barrista, and getting a little extra swirl in the latte. If I entered a Starbucks, it would take about half the time, but without the talk and the swirl.

These are little things to be sure, but when you sacrifice a dozen little things, it adds up to one big thing – namely that you’ve become a soulless corporation.

In thinking of the major brand names in the food world – McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, etc. – the only one I can think of that still has some level of “soul” (for lack of a much better word) is Ben & Jerry’s, and even that’s a bit of a stretch.

Mr. Schultz can’t have it both ways. Either you want power and profit, or you want to really, (and I mean really) connect with the consumer.

Has anyone else noticed the timing of these two stories?

• Starbucks gives the okay for the “create-your-own” latte (previously called the ‘ghetto latte‘).
• Starbucks decides to raise prices by a nickel.

One probably has nothing to do with the other, but it’s certainly weird timing of both of these news releases.

Technorati Tags: Starbucks

A Ghetto (or Poor Man’s) Latte is an iced Americano, with no water and half ice which is then takens to the condiments bar where the milk or half and half is then added.

The question put forth to Starbuck’s Gossip was “Is it fair/right for a customer to order what we, at my store, call a “ghetto-latte”?

My own take? It doesn’t matter as the milk at the condiment bar is not free (it’s already figured into the cost of the menued products). Corporate business being what it is, the …ahem… bean counters here in Seattle have already figured that there’s a few folks who will game the system.

As a side question – has anyone actually ever used the vanilla powder found at the condiments bar?

Technorati Tags: Coffee, Starbucks