Good article from the New York Times.
Summary
Starbucks China is losing customers at a very rapid pace. Starbucks corporate executives are angry. Brian Niccol, the new $100 million CEO of Starbucks, sounded the alarm in October, calling the competition “extreme”. For the Chinese Lunar year, Starbucks released a pork flavor latte. It cost more than $9 and was widely seen as a disaster.
Billionaire Howard Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, insisted that Starbucks would not enter a price war in China. He claimed “as chinese customers become more knowledgeable about coffee, they will want to upgrade from lower-end or discounted products”
Oh hey, glad the Chinese figured out Starbucks is bad.
I too prefer locally owned coffed stores!
… Too bad I’m from Seattle, and Starbucks pretty much killed them all.
Fuck Starbucks.
They appropriated the ‘chill local coffee shop you can hang out at all day’, ran most of those out of business, first in Seattle, then nationwide, then all over the world, and now they just run a coffee themed fast food empire.
Fuck. Starbucks.
Pork Lattes for the Chinese, coffee flavored milkshakes for Americans.
What a fucking joke.
Just came back from Seattle and drank coffee from various coffee places that were not Starbucks every single day.
Would you stop clouding the narrative? We’re trying to hate spiral over here
They failed miserably in Australia as well.
They did, but somehow they’re managing to start making a comeback with their drive through stores. People that want super convenience will put up with a worse coffee for it.