Starbucks

It seems unbelievable to think that twenty years ago hardly anyone in America or Asia knew what a macchiato ( a coffee drink made from espresso coffee and some milk ) was. In India as recent as a decade ago coffee was synonymous to Nescafé nationwide and filter coffee dominating the south, available at a local chaiwallah at humble denomination of less than Rs 5 ( $ 0.09 ). In short, life before latté was simpler. Then the world got introduced to specialty coffees, all thanks to the global behemoth of caffeinated culture called Starbucks. Love it for its taste, deride it for its price or get mesmerized by its aroma, but you cannot ignore Starbucks. As far as coffee is concerned this is as branded as it gets. As it makes its inroads into India this year, lets explore what Starbucks is all about.

Inception
The first Starbucks outlet opened in Seattle, Washington on March 30, 1971 by three partners - Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker. But the real man behind's Starbucks success is Howard Schultz. Schultz was running his own coffee shop called Il Giornale. In 1987 he acquired Starbucks and undertook massive expansion. Apart from the different tastes and degrees of coffee Starbucks is also crazed for its varied patisseries. 

How is Starbucks coffee different ?
Starbucks is ultra careful in procuring its coffee beans. Starbucks primarily uses Arabica coffee beans from sources all around the world ( mostly from highlands of Ethiopia and Java in Indonesia). Unlike other companies who purchase coffee from wholesale international markets abroad, Starbucks gets its coffee from individual farmers. Other than the beans, Starbucks coffee flavour comes from the long and careful roasting process which is done in a Starbucks outlet, a process that results in the thick coffee aroma in the outlet. However, a very important ingredient is, Happiness ( see next section ). 

To more about types of coffee beans, visit Sarah's Coffee Blog. 

Happiness at Starbucks

All employees at Starbucks are called partners. Starbucks has the policy of "we take care of our partners and they take care of our customers". The company has 149,000 full time employees. Starbucks gives health insurance and stock options to even the entry level employees  As a result it has one of the lowest attrition rates and frequently ranks among top 50 among Fortune's best places to work. In an extreme scenario, Sandie Anderson an employee at Starbucks in Tacoma, Washington developed such a good friendship with a very regular customer Annamarie Ausnes, that he donated her one of his kidneys when Ausnes' kidney's failed. 

Nomenclature de-mystified
The compnay was initially planned to be called Pequod after a whaling boat from Moby Dick. The name however did not go well with all of the co-founders. Instead it was named after the chief mate on the Pequod, Starbuck. The mermaid logo was inspired from the fact that the company was named after a nautical character. 

Starbucks outlet in Mumbai, India

Growth Unparalleled
Starbucks opens more than two thousand coffee houses per year. During a particular period in 1990s and the early noughties, Starbucks was opening a new store every working day. There are around 17,000 Starbucks outlets worldwide out of which around 10,700 are in the US. In US, Starbucks builds coffeehouses in such close proximity to each other that they can be as close as twelve feet apart. Starbucks situates stores near dry cleaners and video rental shops to give customers two opportunities to buy coffee: once when dropping something off, once when picking it up. More over, it is known to intimidate its competitors by opening as many as five new cafés per day in a single city. 

The cost of growth
The exponential growth of Starbucks has not come without its controversies. Starbucks outlet in Forbidden city in China was met by some stiff resistance by Chinese population saying that Starbucks “undermined Forbidden City’s solemnity". Starbucks clean image has always been under attack. As a measure to combat the same, Starbucks has a rumors section on its website. Caffeine, is a bug poison used by plants to disable nervous system of any insects who try to munch away its stems. Americans now drink so much coffee that caffeine has been detected in US lakes, rivers, bays and even treated drinking water. Based on all the above facts, opponents of coffee and caffeine in general have launched protests against harmful effects of coffee

Building the brand
When Starbucks made its entry into France in 2004, it was the time when US-French tension had peaked due to the Iraq war. Starbucks was presented as a liquid bridge between the two countries by Howard Schultz, by expressing the event as an opportunity to "share our interpretation of coffee". So strong is the power of Starbucks brand it is known to control direction of traffic in certain cities during the morning hours. Synonymous to the Big Mac Index, some analysts are discussing the possibility of a mermaid index, which will be developed on the basis of number of Starbucks a city has per 100,000 residents.  This index will be an indicator of the quality of life of a city. 

And maintaining this brand equity requires some serious work. Starbucks research and development tries to ascertain which colors will hot in the world of fashion next year, so that future Frapuccino flavours will match the outfits of trendy customers !