Starbucks Gonna Try Instant Coffee

it’s no secret the recession has hit everyone pretty hard.  no industry here in hong kong and around the world is immune from the effects of the economic downturn, except for maybe karaoke.  karaoke always does well.  however, big companies are laying people off, losing money and some are even going bankrupt.  which is no surprise that a even a global conglomerate like starbucks is also taking a huge hit.  i always thought that people loved to pay for over priced sub quality coffee they could make better at home… sad facit is, i know i did and so do you.

starbucks has been hit pretty hard, and noone feels it more than their stores and the staff. since the downturn, over 7000 staff have been given their marching orders and over 300 stores have closed.  that is pretty close to the amount of starbucks stores we have just in central alone.

so any company in trouble would try their best to avoid going down.  like a football team making a specific signing to boost their defence or adding a striker so they can win games and avoid relegation, starbucks has a super sub for their troubles:  instant coffee. 

read: (source article here)

yes you read that right.  instant coffee.  now in my sudden geek excitement, i thought that they had specific machines that produced each order instantly.  as in, lets say someone orders a grande chai tea latte.  they will walk up to some machine push a button, and boom,  grande chai tea latte instantly.  but that was me being naive and thinking too far (thought that would be cool).  they are actually selling packets of instant coffee. so that you can go home and make the same crap coffee at home for a fraction of the price of buying it at the store.

now i know most of you will argue that it’s the experience of starbucks that is popular and non necesarrily the coffee.  i for one drink the tea there only (cause tea is hard to screw up), but there is something about having a good drink and a good setting. so the question is, would you want to experience sub standard coffee at their stores, or at home?

will this work? CEO Howard Shultz obviously thinks so, but i am pretty sure that most people would disagree with this idea.  would you wanna be sitting at home, drinking instant coffee made from a starbucks sachet?  The bottled frappecino didn’t seem to do incredibly well when they were sold in stores and supermarkets. i think 7-11 in Hong Kong is styll trying to sell their first issues of bottles (it tasted neither frozen nor like a frappecino)

next thing you’re gonna tell me is that starbucks are going to do breakfast combos to steal people from mcdonalds. uh wait a second, i spoke too soon.

i’ll leave the discussion up to you.  my verdict, the novelty of it will fly for a few weeks where some people who are way too lazy to go out for that starbucks taste. but i don’t think it is going to be a hit. i avoided the use of a cheesy joke by not inserting the word instant there but it was highly tempting.  

cheers,