An empire with a cup of coffee

Starbucks is by no means the best coffee seller, but it is undoubtedly the best coffee seller, making it the world's leading coffee industry. However, Starbucks was born at an untimely time: in the 1950s, the bad taste of instant coffee completely lost the appetite of the American people, and the coffee market was in the doldrums for the next 20 years.

1971

Starbucks Coffee Shop was established. In the eyes of most people, the way coffee is sold in a cup is absolutely crazy, and industry commentators predict that it is about to close down.

Today, however, Starbucks' coffee shop model is invincible and unstoppable, both in countries with a centuries-old history of coffee and in countries where coffee drinks were largely unheard of 20 years ago. It already has nearly 12000 stores worldwide, covering North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific.

What is the secret of Starbucks' success? In Starbucks: the Legend of Coffee, Business and Culture, author Taylor Clark tries to unravel the answer behind Starbucks' endless magic: the company doesn't just sell coffee, it runs a way of life. it changes the way we live.

The third space

Why do people want to go to Starbucks? This undoubtedly has something to do with Starbucks' sales philosophy.

According to Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, Starbucks sells a wonderful "third space" rather than coffee.

In the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, economic recovery and baby boomers led a generation to reflect on the fast-food lifestyle, and people began to look for a place outside their families to relax. Howard Schultz timely copied the coffee bar model from Italy to Starbucks, creating a spiritual habitat different from the bar.

Howard Schultz believes that people are emotionally connected to coffee. He has long grasped this emotional power in his products, which is the key for Starbucks to attract customers and the secret to sticking to customers.

As Alfred Polger, an Austrian writer, said, a coffee shop "is such a place where people need to be alone and want company around", and you can enjoy a sense of relaxation in the crowd. You can buy a drink for a few dollars, then stretch out in your seat for four hours or read a book quietly.

There is no doubt that Starbucks meets the needs of many people. It is comfortable and easy to pass the time; coffee is moderately priced and safer and healthier than alcohol. People pour in, friends talk, and coffee bars become emotional ties with each other.

At the same time, Starbucks also provides a temporary office space for office workers, who more than quadrupled in the 1990s. Jim Lomonsk is the webmaster of the famous media industry news blog. he works in four or five Starbucks stores in the Chicago area every day. "if I want a cup of coffee, I can sit in a Starbucks for five hours, and no one will hint that I need to leave, and no one will bother me," he said. "

In his book "the Great place," written by Ray Odenberg, an American professor of urban sociology, he mentioned that what the United States needs is a neutral, safe public gathering place, which has gradually faded out of sight. He calls this gathering place the "third space", while the family and the workplace are the first space and the second space respectively, and he even thinks that these third spaces should be centered on drinks.

The enlightened Starbucks has found the rallying cry of fraternity, claiming that Starbucks is not a simple coffee company, but through coffee as a social binder to provide people with the third space of the meeting place.

Now, Starbucks customers no longer come here on a whim, but every day, sometimes many times a day. According to statistics, in the United States, most customers visit Starbucks 18 times a week.

Implanted advertisement

In the commercial society, spending a lot of money on advertising seems to be the only magic weapon for many brands to occupy the market. However, if we pay a little attention, Starbucks almost never launches an advertising campaign with great fanfare. From 1987 to 1997, it spent only $10 million on advertising, while Coca-Cola spent so much every two days.

According to Starbucks: the Legend of Coffee, Business and Culture, Howard Schultz is a shrewd businessman who wants to maximize the promotion of the Starbucks brand but does not want to spend too much on advertising. Therefore, in the era of all kinds of advertising, Starbucks chose a unique way of marketing-it speaks for itself.

At Starbucks, everything customers see is no accident, from the store environment to white paper cups, is the product of careful thinking and psychological research. Starbucks has a unified logo-Mermaid, all stores have become Starbucks billboards, its paper cups and bags are also mobile brand symbols. And the company also ensures that people enjoy promoting themselves, and that consumers no longer come here just for a cup of coffee, but for the Starbucks experience.

Starbucks, on the other hand, boldly conquered Hollywood, turning high-profile celebrities into mobile ads.

Steve Martin, known as the "White-headed comedian," enters a stupid cafe in the film Love is wonderful and asks the waiter to serve a cup of "half regular coffee with decaffeinated coffee and half double decaffeinated coffee with lemon". This joke is considered to be the first recognition of the coffee trend in the mainstream media. Starbucks began to break into Hollywood's line of sight.

Stars soon discovered that labeled coffee was made for special taste. Just like steak, you can choose from a variety of flavors when ordering.

At Starbucks, there are 55000 coffee drink combinations to highlight different personalities, so that customers will not simply drink it, but will savor it and think about it. From a technical point of view, the oversized cappuccino with milk is almost the same as the oversized 190 degrees Fahrenheit non-foam latte, but that's not the problem.

At Starbucks, demanding details are respected because they advocate respecting and pampering customers' taste habits. And this has won the favor of Hollywood, which is used to nitpicking.

As a result, many stars have become loyal fans of Starbucks, and Starbucks trademarks have been exposed in a large number of photos of entertainment news, and have not even appeared in many films, which can be regarded as free, full-coverage placement ads.

Compete with oneself

In its heyday, Starbucks opened a new coffee shop every eight hours. However, the ambitious Howard Schultz not only squeezed the survival space of competitors such as Terry by way of expansion, but even let "oneself and yourself" compete in the same region, thus maximizing the development of other coffee brands.

In early 1991, Howard Schultz's most profitable coffee shop was at the intersection of Robson Street in Canada. It served coffee to tens of thousands of people every week, while there were still long queues of customers waiting outside. Clerks have to shut out hundreds of potential customers every day.

According to Starbucks: the Legend of Coffee, Business and Culture, Howard Schultz could not accept the large number of customers, and his response was to open a new store within walking distance of the existing Starbucks store.

This crazy and bold idea has been frequently questioned by investors. They believe that if the old and new stores are too close to each other, it will inevitably affect business, and in the end, the loss outweighs the gain. Howard Schultz retorts that if efforts are made to make the designs of the two stores very different, they can attract a very different customer base.

On March 2, 1991, Starbucks Twin Store officially opened for business. Incredibly, instead of scoffing at Starbucks' prominence, customers rushed to patronize it. The turnover of the two stores did not affect each other. On the contrary, as Howard Schultz had expected, the two stores attracted a different customer base.

Well-dressed, well-pocketed business people prefer the new store, while people who follow the trend and enjoy casual nature are sentimentally attached to the old store, both the old store and the new store are full of people. The performance of the two stores on Robson Street soon topped the list of Starbucks stores.

Nowadays, people are accustomed to the fact that many Starbucks stores are not far apart. In Portland, Oregon, for example, there are two Starbucks at the Pioneer Plaza mall in the upscale shopping district, just 12 feet away, and three in Astor Square Square in Manhattan, New York.

This centralized bombing mode of chain stores makes Starbucks a magic weapon to besiege its competitors without giving it any living space. It is a nightmare for other coffee chains to encounter Starbucks.

When suppressing competitors, Starbucks will use high rents to tempt homeowners to stop renting to competitors, or simply surround competitors with Starbucks stores so that they have no choice but to withdraw, or even buy shares of competitors. and put it under the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks opened as many stores as possible, but almost none of them lost money. It has achieved success both as a business empire and as a cultural symbol. More importantly, Starbucks always conveys its own value in the "ubiquitous" marketing.

Starbucks offers a similar luxury experience, physical and mental pleasure, a sense of social belonging, a safe haven, all of which people yearn for. This common demand makes Starbucks transcend national boundaries and culture to create a coffee empire legend.