Starbucks Has a Pumpkin Spice Latte Problem in China
www.nytimes.com
For years, Starbucks was the dominant coffee chain in China. Now rivals offering local flavors and cheaper prices are crushing the company’s bottom line in its second-largest market.

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”

  • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
    4·
    18 days ago

    I can make much better coffee at home, and I can take one with me to work in a flask.

    But lots of people don’t want to, dont have time to, or can’t make fresh coffee at home and therefore buy it out.

    But even if i make it at home, if I want a second coffee during the work day, I’d have to either have instant coffee from work or buy one.

    FWIW: My take on Starbucks is that their coffee is a) usually quite average at best, b) variable quality depending upon where you buy it.

    Where I live there are lots of alternatives which serve better coffee for about the same price, so I don’t really see any need to use Starbucks.

    Last time I had a Starbucks was on a road trip at a motorway service station. It wasn’t very good coffee at all, and afterwards I resented having paid service station prices for a coffee I didn’t enjoy. But in that scenario they have a captive audience.