OK, I’m going to try to cover one of those “small items” I promised the other day. Actually, it may not be so small to the folks at Starbucks. Last week the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that Coca-Cola appears to be developing a simple to prepare high-quality, single-serving coffee product that could be sold to its countless restaurant customers. This would supposedly make it easy for any restaurant to offer a line of coffees competitive with Starbuck’s, and presumably (hopefully!!) at a lower price.
While I suppose many would argue this wouldn’t matter much because the other places couldn’t match Starbuck’s atmosphere, to me this is actually a plus. I’ve never liked Starbuck’s atmosphere, though to be fair I haven’t visited many. I also seem to have a hard time figuring out what to order, and at nearly $4 each, don’t care to experiment too much. In any case, I think I like the French sort of coffee you get at La Madeleine or some of the beignet places we have here in Houston better.
There’s a new coffee/ice cream place here, Piccomolo, that my daughter likes. They offer free wi-fi and seem to be pretty popular, but don’t have a whole lot more ambience than a Baskin-Robbins. To me, coffee is about relaxation and either concentration (e.g. on a nice book) or conversation, which I think happens better in nicer, more comfortable and non-noisy settings (unlike Starbucks).
In any case, I think Starbuck’s relatively free ride is about over, and we’ll see a lot more serious competition in the coffee space before long. I hope prices will go down some, too. Coke’s likely approach of selling through their restaurant customers may be hard to beat. They’ve fought some pretty tough marketing battles over the years; maybe it’s appropriate their ticker symbol is KO.
