Coffee: Drink or lifestyle? How about both?
Posted by TheShot on 10 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Starbucks
In case you thought last week’s coffee lifestyle article was something of a joke, a headline from today’s Muncie, IN The Star Press might convince you otherwise: Coffee: Drink or lifestyle? How about both? | The Star Press - www.thestarpress.com - Muncie, IN. Except here your lifestyle statement isn’t so much in your choice of what you drink, but rather in where you drink it.
And when you’re living in Muncie, IN, anything this side of Denny’s Bunn-warmer drip coffee is emancipating. (And as a guest speaker at Ball State University, I have actually been to Muncie and sampled the local coffee.) Thus the article predictably offers a good dose of middle America’s cult-like worship of Starbucks. Here there are more platitudes about the “third place” in our lives — and how Starbucks set the standard for speciality coffee. And yet Starbucks remains the standard, despite the explosive growth of better alternatives.
But when you check all the references, you quickly come to the realization that much of the cult of Starbucks and its ‘Buckniks has little to do with their coffee. More often, it’s about brand coziness with a clean, approachable, predictable, and convenient location and their variety of high-calorie milkshakes (with coffee added for flavoring). When you come down to it, the great irony is that a lot of people really don’t like the taste of coffee. Yet Starbucks thrives under a coffee identity by making the otherwise unpallatable pallatable for millions of consumers, serving it under various disguises.
Today’s The Star Press also offers a capsule on Muncie’s four best coffee options: Caffeine addicts sing the praises of Muncie’s growing collection of shops | The Star Press - www.thestarpress.com - Muncie, IN (pardon my gagging over the title: another cliché caffeine riff that plagues so many unimaginative writers). In case you should ever find yourself lost in northeast Indiana.
5 Comments »
on 03 Feb 2007 at 3:50 pm -06:00T 1.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Coffee taste test stirs hot debate said …
[...] But the coffee purveyors like it this way. It means that their brands have come to stand more than just their coffee; their brands have come to identify with personal lifestyles — something much more intimate and personally defining. The real truth is, of course, in Starbucks’ statement in response to Consumer Reports‘ study: “Choosing a brand of coffee is a personal decision, as taste is subjective.” So much for Jim Donald’s recent comments about customers “graduating” from McDonald’s to the unquestionable superiority of Starbucks’ “super-premium” coffee. [...]
on 06 Mar 2007 at 2:54 pm -06:00T 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » All the King’s Horses, and All the King’s Marketing Consultants… said …
[...] And the superautomatic machines? So what! — just keep the drinks coming fast and “clown-free”. Keep on cranking out the double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiatos and your broad array of coffee-flavored beverages. Note that I did not say “coffee” — as your profits are in the coffee-flavored milkshakes, not in single shots of espresso. As I mentioned before, most people really don’t like coffee anyway. A key ingredient to your success has been convincing your customers that they do like coffee — just your version of it. [...]
on 01 May 2007 at 3:50 pm -05:00T 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Crack coffee: when coffee has nothing to do with it said …
[...] It’s one thing for the likes of Starbucks to purvey their popular coffee-flavored milkshakes (double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato, anyone?) — suitably designed for people who don’t like coffee, but want to play along anyway. But it’s another thing entirely when some coffee purveyors treat the beverage purely as a narcotic with no other redeeming qualities whatsoever. [...]
on 18 Jul 2007 at 7:14 pm -05:00T 4.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Toronto's love affair with espresso bars heats up said …
[...] sentence to some people. But who in their right mind needs over 100 coffee drinks? That smacks of Starbucks’ coffee-flavored milkshake approach, primarily aimed at people who really don’t like coffee but still want to play along as if [...]
on 15 Aug 2007 at 7:46 am -05:00T 5.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » The Rise of Yuppie Foods said …
[...] Sure, like the Third Wavers, I still believe taste is big part of it. CoffeeRatings.com owes its existence to my first revelation espresso. But on the whole, there’s clearly a lot more to it than just that: coffee is a booming, not a dying, business today. Even if you don’t think coffee has become a mildly addictive fashion accessory, how do you explain all the new coffee drinkers — many of whom don’t even like coffee? [...]