I read that Starbucks sales are down, its stock price is down, and they’ve resorted to “happy hour” deals to get customers back. The common wisdom is inflation gas raised prices, and belts are tightening.
Except there is data that consumer confidence (which always lags economic data) is rising. So Starbucks may yet recover, if the CW is correct. Or maybe it won’t, because Starbucks is a victim of its own success.
The original idea of Starbucks was to revive the coffee house experience of the ‘50’s by replicating the coffee house experience of Europe. Except outside the East Coast (more accurately the BosWash), most Americans live in suburbs and work “downtown.” Meaning they don’t walk anywhere: they drive. They don’t walk to a Starbucks, they drive to it. One of the most popular Starbucks near me is strictly a drive thru. In the morning it shuts down a lane on the I-10 feeder because cars are backed up to get in. It’s hardly a communal experience. Some outlets do invite people to linger, but it’s mostly people on laptops using the free electricity and wi-fi. The most comfortable Starbucks I knew had overstuffed chairs and couches. They were soon replaced. I think people were sitting too long and not drinking enough. It could be tiresome to arrive at the wrong time and find all the comfortable seats taken, and have to hunch over a wooden table in a wooden chair instead. The place eventually democratized and the wooden chairs took over. People lingering declined, too.
What Starbucks always really offered was better coffee at a higher price. After all, if it’s cheap, it can’t be that good, right? And that’s where the problem lies. Expensive, unless you are Hermes or Ralph Lauren, soon just means “overpriced.”
Starbucks today is competing with all the home brewers of coffee, and all the coffee machines. You can even make all the elaborate sugary flavored drinks Starbucks makes, at home. Or near enough for dammit. Starbucks ran away from straight coffee years ago, constantly chasing change with new varieties of drinks, many with no relationship to coffee at all. But not before they taught America to drink good coffee, instead of brown water.
Most Starbucks coffee is burnt water (IMHO), and the quality of the latte (which is the only drinkable coffee in the place, again IMHO. I don’t like my coffee sweetened with anything. YMMV.) depends entirely on who’s making it. It varies from store to store and from employee to employee. When you can make the same thing at home, and control the quality, why go out?
You can also control the price at home. The cost at home never reaches what Starbucks charges, even if you buy an expensive coffee maker. (Full disclosure: my espresso maker is an Italian stovetop job. Works fine for me, and doesn’t take up counter space. Most of my coffee is brewed in a Chemex I’ve had for 40 years.) I think Starbucks taught us coffee could be a lot better than Folgers (although coffee roasters were around before Starbucks was nationwide, so the ground was already plowed, in one sense). And as we figured that out, we figured out we don’t need Starbucks.
There are also better, less expensive alternatives. I’ve found them in small town Texas. Coffee roasters brewing an excellent cup at prices that wouldn’t cover half the cost of the Starbucks equivalent.
I really think Starbucks caught everyone’s attention, but we’ve moved on. It was always a bit of a luxury, but people can get that luxury at home. Or at a local coffee shop. Starbucks isn’t doomed, necessarily. But it no longer leads the pack; and I don’t think that’s just because its prices (as they’ve always been), are a bit too high. It’s not really inflation that’s hurting Starbucks; it’s the realization that we don’t need it anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment