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 $9 and was widely seen as a disaster.
Billionaire Howard Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, insisted that Starbucks would not enter a price war in China. He claimed “as chinese customers become more knowledgeable about coffee, they will want to upgrade from lower-end or discounted products”
I don’t get why anyone goes to a Starbucks still. If I want aRtiSAn coffee I can still get it cheaper and probably far better quality.
My favorite indulgence is an iced coffee with bananas from Nordstrom (I’m still confused why they went into the coffee business but they are quite successful) and the large cup is still cheaper than what Starbucks offers. I haven’t set foot in one for a couple of years because 7$ for an iced mocha was revolting.
Their iced mocha coffee was all I drank but even the glass bottles they sold in stores I had to stop buying. It’s coffee, not gold!
A lot of suburban sprawl in the USA doesn’t have good local coffee shops around and Starbucks is the best, or at least reasonably close, option available to get a fancy caffeine fix.
Plus they serve lots of things other than over roasted drip coffee.
I like some of their iced drinks and macchiatos. But I like sweet garbage with too many calories. So my palette isn’t exactly refined. However, that’s a lot of the reason is just lack of options and people genuinely like their sugary sweet drinks and will pay a premium for everybody’s favorite drug caffeine.