Is Starbucks recent $1 cup of coffee move a day late and a dollar short?
With Starbucks recent decision to offer coffee for $1, there’s certainly been a lot of Starbucks gossip brewing (no pun intended, honestly, it just came out) and various opinions about why Starbucks, the goliath american misto dispensary, is doing such a thing.
My favourite, and probably most obvious, is that some Starbucks executives are probably tossing and turning at night thinking about the 14,000 McDonalds locations about to blast into the fancy coffee arena.
From what I understand, they’ll be trialing it in Seattle and I’m interested to see if this takes off. Back in October, I talked about one of the innovative partnership ideas Starbucks introduced in the States. And I’ll stick by that one…it’s pretty slick. I even remember back in 2003/4 when I first saw egg mc muffin lookalikes on a trip down to Seattle…things certainly do catch on fast.
Cool partnerships, bells n’ whistles, egg mc muffins, and overpriced espresso machines aside, one thing makes this all come together is your interaction with all things Starbucks when you are being served.
If you’ve been reading timinganddelivery.com lately, you probably remember the insanity of a 15 minute experience at the Starbucks in Whistler. Well, I’m here to say that I’m pretty impressed with what happened when the smoke cleared.
What’s that, you ask? Starbucks (corporate) personally got back to me (if a corporation can do that) indicating that they were sorry such an incident occured and casued an inconvenience for myself and the rest of the hungover/ski’d out people in line. In fact, there are some Starbucks gift certificates apparently on their way to my mailbox!
GC’s aside, I gotta say that this is a class move on behalf of the powers that be in the marketing machine that is Starbucks Corp. I can’t even begin to fathom how many complaints Starbucks comes across like this (directly, indirectly, or otherwise).
The fact that they take time to care about the little things leads me to believe that Starbucks really is centred on people like you and me. And in the end, that’s what makes it all work, no?
What do you think? Have you been burned by Starbucks or treated like a rockstar?
darren
Hmmm… I hate Starbucks, actually. I will go there when I have to, but it’s certainly not good coffee.
And, McDonalds actually did trial this feature years ago in places like Maple Ridge — Didn’t go over very well there. They even modeled a separate lounge style area for their coffee shop after something like Starbucks. It was always empty. Because seriously, who wants to go and sit at McDonalds to people watch? Not I.
Especially not in Maple Ridge.
Give me my Artigianos any day of the week. Slightly less expensive than Starbucks, and AWARD WINNING goodness in every cup. Why would anyone suffer with Starbucks crap if they have an Artigianos nearby?