The buck stops here: the pressure is on for the US coffee shop giant
With Starbucks posting its first ever losses, is our love affair with Americanos finally over?
Starbuck is weird. It comes from Seattle, which means it is only the third thing ever to come out of that city that anybody has heard of, after Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. It also takes its name from a character in Moby Dick, a novel about a lunatic obsessed with a whale. Like I say, it’s weird.
That hasn’t stopped it from becoming one of the most successful companies in the world over the past decade and a bit. To the perplexity of tea-drinkers every where, Starbucks has tapped a hitherto unknown global desire for watery and/or milky coffee-flavoured drinks with absurd names and massive prices. Thanks to Starbucks, Americanos and Frappuccinos have entered our lexicon.
But things aren’t all hunky-dory in Starbucks world. This week it posted the first quarterly loss in its history. This follows the closure last week of 61 of its 84 Australian stores.
The nay-sayers are feverishly sharpening their pencils to write the obituaries for Starbucks, but they are surely premature. Expansion in the UK continues, with plans to open 100 stores by the end of the financial year. That would suggest that there is a lot of life left in the old ’Buck yet. On the other hand, tastes are moving on. Is it the beginning of the end for Starbucks ?
Yes (Jeremy Hazlehurst)
Starbucks, with its frivolous, pointless four-quid-a-cup monstrosities was a boom-time beast. Full stop. While everybody felt flush, they were willing to splurge on these silly drinks. Now the bears have taken over in the markets, the era of Venti Skinny Thingummyjigs is over.
And while we’re on the subject, what is it with those names? The love of Starbucks was tied up with the silly words they used for the drinks. What’s wrong with “small”, “medium” and “large”? Venti, indeed. It’s a certain type of person – the permanent teenager, to be blunt – who gets off on the slang. There are plenty of them, and it’s a sad spectacle.
Let’s not forget, either, that many of Starbucks’ offerings are not exactly health food. The largest semi-skimmed Iced Hazelnut Mocha with whipped cream is 599 calories, according to Starbucks’ website – and they don’t even list the full-fat version. To put that in context, a woman’s daily recommended calorie intake is 2000, a man’s 2500. Not something to drink in the company of your cardiologist.
The other thing is that, for all its fancy coffee, in Starbucks you can’t even get a proper cappuccino as they understand it in Italy. There, it’s a 6oz-er that is one third each of coffee, milk and froth. The smallest Starbucks do is 8oz, and the largest 20oz, with a double espresso. At that strength, you are drinking milk with a hint of coffee, not coffee.
The other thing is that, for all its fancy coffee, in Starbucks you can’t even get a proper cappuccino as they understand it in Italy. There, it’s a 6oz-er that is one third each of coffee, milk and froth. The smallest Starbucks do is 8oz, and the largest 20oz, with a double espresso. At that strength, you are drinking milk with a hint of coffee, not coffee.
I’m not being a puritan, but there’s nothing wrong with simple flavours. There’s no way with all that cream and gunk, that you can even taste the coffee in a Starbucks drink. Their drinks are decadent and plain silly: they are pornography for the palate. Pass the tea-bags.
No (Zoe Strimpel)
First off: an admission. I grew up in the US. This means that when it comes to things like consistency, value for money and good service, my standards are infinitely more developed than yours. Ssshh now, it’s true. And nowhere does this apply more than the world of upmarket, standardised caffeinated beverages, of which Starbucks is king.
By the time I moved to London, I had spent years swanning into the chain, never waiting in a queue and getting exactly what I wanted. A venti iced Americano with caramel sauce? Hot milk on the side? No problem. “It’s your choice,” their efficient computation of the order seemed to say, “and choice is what America is all about.” The Starbucks drinks menu is possibly the most developed form of consumerism on the high street; a seriously bespoke product for £3.
British Starbucks still has a way to go. What on earth, asks the spotty youth on the till, could you want a cup of unsweetened soya milk on the side of your Americano for? But I have hope. The appeal of exponential choice at no extra cost, even if it is just coffee, is too great to resist.
What self-professed coffee purists are missing in their blind rush for the nearest Nespresso machine is that the menu is the key to Starbucks’ genius. It is a celebration of specific tastes and our right to indulge and develop them. You want a grande vanilla skinny extra hot soya latte no foam with an extra shot of espresso? Go right ahead: you deserve it.
Of course, there are those for whom a little thimble of espresso ticks all their coffee boxes. Well, apparently they’ve never woken up tired and, after the trek through the summer humidity to get to work, fancied something enlivening, refreshing and big. I’ll end with another confession: if it weren’t for my venti iced Americano (with pouring cream, not milk, on the side), every morning I’d find the day a lot tougher to handle. And, thanks to the “vulgar” standardisation of the shop that sells it to me, it’s the same every time. Thank God for that.