
The hidden meaning of the hidden Starbucks logo - alex_c
http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2009/11/27/the-hidden-meaning-of-the-hidden-starbucks-logo/
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Alex3917
The way people signal they are intelligent and sophisticated changes over
time. Starbucks is still fine for 6am before the train, but you'd never take a
first date there; it would send the wrong signals.

The way they are tackling this problem is all wrong though. Even if they had
unlimited amounts of money, they still wouldn't be able hire enough people
with good taste to create a different culture at each location. All they can
do is rearrange the furniture a little, and people are too smart for that.

The biggest asset Starbucks has going for it is that when you walk in there,
they actually make your coffee as opposed to glaring at you and going back to
reading their book. What if instead of trying to hide their biggest assets,
they actually leveraged them to become like Reddit for food. That is, they'd
showcase local culinary talent and various new and interesting niche
beverages. But at the same time there would be a certain consistency in the
atmosphere, culture, and service.

This strikes me as the ideal because you could attract people with both high
and low openness to experience and neuroticism. And thanks to technology you
could do it without needing to identify/hire lots of people with great taste,
which is basically impossible at that scale.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
"The biggest asset Starbucks has going for it is that when you walk in there,
they actually make your coffee as opposed to glaring at you and going back to
reading their book."

Which is exactly why I started going to the new 'Cryptobucks' mentioned in the
article instead of the independent coffee shop across the street from them...
That, and the coffee at the Roy St Starbucks is simply better.

~~~
SirWart
If you are looking for a quality coffee, I would walk the extra block to
Vivace. If you are looking for convenience, I agree that friendliest baristas
is probably the deciding factor.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
My girlfriend is bizarrely obsessed with drip coffee and lives at 700 Broadway
East (i.e. literally above Roy St. Coffee). For some reason, she doesn't like
espresso. I agree Vivace is better.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
she wants me to remand my statement. Apparently I did not adequately express
her perspective (Professors...).

Anyway, and I quote: "I'm not an idiot, I know Vivace is the best coffee in
Seattle!"

Sigh.

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Tichy
Maybe what people say they want is different from what they want. They might
say they want to eat healthy and still stop by McDonalds on a regular basis.

~~~
icey
It wouldn't be that surprising.

INC did an interview with Markus Frind where he talked about not necessarily
trusting what his users wanted when it came to partners. He's got an algorithm
that suggests people for matches even if they said they wouldn't be interested
in the person:

 _... if you tell Plenty of Fish you want to date blond nonsmokers but spend
all your time gawking at nicotine-addled brunettes, the program will adjust_

(The quote is on page 4: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-
comes-rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-
rolling-in.html) )

~~~
robotrout

        ... if you tell Plenty of Fish you want to date blond 
            nonsmokers but spend all your time gawking at 
            nicotine-addled brunettes, the program will adjust 
    

Of course, if your business model was affiliate links to other sites, when
they didn't find what they wanted on your site, such an algorithm would also
be good;

------
tel
Starbucks has always seemed self-defeating to me. The original goal was to
introduce coffee art to a consumer culture that was, at the time, fixated on
Folger's. They've succeeded in moving people to believe that there's a lot
more to coffee which has seriously expanded the market for the kind of high-
craft coffee possible at smaller, non-franchise shops. Today, Starbucks
doesn't really have the brand to move into that niche, everyone knows their
secret is just sugar and milk, so they need to stealthily make inroads.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, franchise and craft don't go together
that well.

I remember reading an article about a certain kind of highly engineered coffee
maker. It combined the grinder, water heater, mixer, and press all into one
and thus turned perfect coffee into an exactly repeatable formula. A trained
operator can never fail to please and Starbucks bought the company hoping to
put one of those devices in every franchise and revolutionize the availability
of the "perfect cup".

In pilots the baristas still fill them with stale beans.

~~~
psranga
Minor correction to your post: there are no( _) Starbucks franchises.

(_): except in certain high-traffic locations locations like airports etc
where Starbucks co-owns the store with the property owner.
<http://www.starbucks.com/customer/faq_qanda.asp?name=common>

~~~
tel
I actually wasn't aware of that. It's an interesting business structure, but I
think at the end of the day it is only going to bring a small improvement to
the atmosphere.

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lmkg
Is this trend generally true of large brands, or is it specific to the
Starbucks brand? Starbucks was somewhat a victim of their own success, in that
their rapid, headline-making expansion gave their brand shades of "corporate
drone" and "cookie-cutter" and suchlike in the popular culture. In the current
economic climate it's not surprising that people would reject large brands in
favor of local producers, but I would expect that to be a more industry-
specific tokenism that a general consumer shift.

On the other hand, if the non-branded stores aren't succeeding either, maybe
the coffee's just bad.

~~~
jcl
_maybe the coffee's just bad_

That would be my guess, too, assuming that customers can't otherwise tell the
difference between real non-Starbucks stores and the fake non-Starbucks
stores. A Consumer Reports taste test in 2007 placed Starbucks's coffee behind
McDonald's, with a mixed followup review in 2009:

[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/beverages/coffee-
tea...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/beverages/coffee-tea/coffee-
taste-test-3-07/overview/0307_coffee_ov_1.htm)

[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-
archive/august-2...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-
archive/august-2009/food/new-brews/overview/new-coffee-taste-test-ov.htm)

~~~
lionhearted
> Consumer Reports taste test in 2007 placed Starbucks's coffee behind
> McDonald's

Starbucks had consistently above average coffee at all of their stores at a
time when it was hard to get above average coffee consistently. Since then, a
number of places have offered good coffee - McDonalds isn't prestigious at
all, but they now serve Newman's Own which is quite good. Subway serves
Seattle's Best, so during busy times when the coffee isn't old and burnt,
that's good. Heck, 7-11 has pretty good coffee these days. I prefer all three
of those to Starbucks for plain coffee. Starbucks does make a good Americano
though, and I don't drink the fancy mixed coffee drinks so much, but my fancy
coffee drinking friends say Starbucks does it pretty well.

These days, it's not hard to get a cup of pretty good black coffee in a lot of
different stores in the USA. Still, Starbucks is usually playing the Beatles
or classical music, has a comfortable enough ambiance, and employees who are
pretty happy and friendly. So I'll grab a cup of joe to run from Subway or
McDonalds or 7-11, but if I'm going to sit down and read a book, I'll lean
towards Starbucks. That's what they've got these days - their regular ol'
coffee isn't anything special.

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rykov
Not sure why everyone thinks that Starbucks is taking this step from a
position of weakness. As far as business is concerned, I think it's a good
strategic move for them to explore this growth channel regardless of their
brand's strength. Many other companies have a successful strategy involving
both private label and branded products.

Amazon Shoes Category vs Endless.com (vs Zappos.com)

Essentials Baking Co. vs Trader Joe's bread (in Seattle)

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olefoo
My theory of the fall of Starbucks is that this is just one instance of a
trend I refer to as "The Conspicuous Consumption of Knowledge". In this case,
knowledge of the locale is a point of pride, customers of independent coffee
shops know more about the places they frequent, and they know it better than
anyone else, and can impress their friends by introducing the wonderful little
place that they have found. But you see the same trend manifesting in other
ways as well; whether it's knowing the right shoes, to renewably sourced
power; it's what the customers know, or think they know, that makes or breaks
the experience. And much of the time, they want to know these details so that
they can display their knowledge in social situations.

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psranga
The article was thin on facts and read like wishful thinking. The key piece of
info was that the unbranded stores had 1/3 the traffic of branded stores. From
this the author concludes that people dislike the Starbucks brand? I would
have thought the opposite!!!!

~~~
asher
I agree. The author has an interesting theory, but he needs to dig up some
real facts to support it.

As you point out, his solidest fact undermines his theory.

I wonder if there is a "brand backlash"? And if it's temporary, and linked to
the recession? I think that within an individual's life, the power of brands
goes down over time. Maybe as the author and his friends get older, they are
feeling less compulsion from brands?

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jsz0
Where I'm from (Rural north east US) StarBucks did a horrible job adapting to
local coffee tradition. They were trying to create a market for more exotic
coffee drinks that simply aren't in demand here. The preferred choice for most
people is donut or bagel + coffee and usually via drive through. StarBucks
failed to educate customers here they offered regular ole' coffee at a
reasonable price. Everyone assumed it was $5 drinks. (and they had to stop
down the road at a competing chain to get their precious Boston Creme donut or
Everything bagel) I believe we had about half a dozen StarBucks within a 50
mile radius at one point and there are maybe 2 left now.

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gojomo
Every winning strategy is repeated and expanded until the point where it
becomes a losing strategy. (A little longer, even , because there is a
momentum around the expansion phase, and recognizing the returns have swung
negative is not immediate.)

This has always been true.

What may be new is the pace: a winning formula can be taken nationwide,
netwide, worldwide faster than ever before. So it also reaches its points of
diminishing returns and rising countermeasures sooner. The utter dominance of
the Starbucks model can be followed almost immediately by its exhaustion.

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bugs
It seems that the trend is that people are becoming very anti-corporation or
large corporations for that matter, put up a store like trader joe's people
will beg and plead for more but now large towns that don't yet have a
superwalmart will beg and plead for them not to build and even stop them from
building through the government.

Though it does depend on the town, that specific example usually works
together.

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GeneralMaximus
> Landsdowne never got a Starbucks, but Benicia, California and a lot of other
> towns got plenty of Starbucks.

In New Delhi, there are often two or three Café Coffee Day outlets located a
couple of meters away from each other. Strangely enough, they're all mostly
full.

Oh, and McDonald's. There's a McDonald's _everywhere_.

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JMiao
1/3 volume of a typical starbucks location might be par for a locally-owned
shop.

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DenisM
Does it mean we need to create non-brand brands now? Hm.

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seldo
I really don't think this says anything about branding. It says people don't
want shitty coffee, and that they recognize shitty coffee whether or not it
has a Starbucks logo on it.

