Starbucks experiments with ‘debranded’ stores in Seattle
The Starbucks Corporation, a brand that has become synonymous with gourmet coffee drinks, has become so large that the ubiquity of its shops is actually hurting its image. In cities where a Starbucks can be found on almost every corner (check your Starbucks density), the corporation hopes that removing the green logo from their shops will encourage consumers to drink more Starbucks coffee. The trouble is that those customers may not realize where their coffee is coming from.
The first stores to be ‘debranded’ are in Seattle, where their first shop opened in 1971. These stores will no longer bear the Starbucks name. From the Seattle Times:
The new names are meant to give the stores “a community personality,” said Tim Pfeiffer, senior vice president of global design. Starbucks’ logo will be absent, with bags of the company’s coffee and other products rebranded with the 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea name.
In the spirit of a traditional coffeehouse, it will serve wine and beer, host live music and poetry readings and sell espresso from a manual machine rather than the automated type found in most Starbucks stores.
I can see this campaign having both positive and negative effects. If the owner or manager of the store is given enough leeway to make purchasing and decorating decisions, the store might have a truly unique atmosphere. The furnishings might come from local shops and the decorations from local artists. Baristas who care more about their product might serve up a better cup than they would in an ordinary Starbucks. (However, unless those stores are given the opportunity to roast their own beans, each cup will have the nearly-trademarked burnt coffee taste that Starbucks is so well known for.) The life music and (terribly-clichéd) poetry readings might spice up otherwise spartan coffee houses.
Unfortunately, it seems as though this might be a marketing scheme designed to hide the product of a large corporation behind the façade of a small one. A cup of coffee that appears to be a local product but whose beans are actually bought, roasted, and shipped by an enormous corporation borders on false advertising.
One might argue that coffee can never be a local product of the U.S., as almost no coffee beans are grown here. My defense of local roasters and shops is that those local enterprises often put more value on personal relationships and transparency all the way through the supply chain, buying directly from farms in some cases. Profits go mainly back into the community or to the region where the beans are grown, whereas a healthy portion of a large chain’s profits are sent to the corporate behemoth. Finally, local roasters and shops can promote the genuine individuality of a neighborhood, rather than “community personality” as decided by a large corporation.
(via Treehugger)
