I'm concerned with the continual buyout of large established UK companies by US ones. It's happened a lot in the past ~10 years, most notably Cadbury's, and not only are there tax implications, but the standard of product seems to drop to the lowest acceptable while attempting to keep the same prices. There's also the issue with business ethics of the parent company, which tend to be rather different than the UK.
I think that anyone with appreciate for coffee would understand certain coffee has a time and a place, even coffee from big chain coffee places or restaurants.
It's not just US companies, although US companies are picking up more household names.
For the best part of the past decade, UK firms have largely underperformed compared to their US counterparts. The pound is depressed due to the way Brexit has gone to date and is likely to fall further still, making British companies undervalued on average.
A lot of British companies (like Whitbread, who own Costa) gain substantial revenues from abroad but are exposed to currency risks through the pound and anaemic economic growth at home.
Not as weird a fit as it might seem. Coca-Cola's Ready To Drink coffee brand in Japan, Georgia Coffee, is incredibly profitable (accounts for around 12% of Coca-Cola's global profit, despite only really being sold in Japan.)
When I lived in the states a friend of mine always used to say: “Starbucks sells fat and sugar to people, so their mainly competing against McDonalds”
That made a lot of sense to me, and I could understand much better why they would introduce McCafes. Thus I think that this is probably a smart move although a bit late...
I always struggle with the doublethink that a "coffee" (that is, a black coffee) has nearly 0 calories. But a "coffee" (that is a drink that is really fat and sugar with some coffee added there) could have x calories where x is a stupidly large number...
yeah, even 'coffee' with milk is... the calories of milk. and I like a lot of milk in my coffee. or... I like a bit of coffee with my milk, to be more precise. so i've needed to watch how many I have. can't really deal with plain black coffee.
My friend - concerned that her daughter could put up weight from spending too much time in Starbucks - remarked that Starbucks basicaly serve coffee deserts rather then coffee.
What does this have to do with Starbucks? Any place that serves coffee offers additives that increase calorie count. How is this brand any different? Black coffee is the same calorie count everywhere.
I don't have sales figures but a lot of people I know who travel a lot say that, in the UK at least, the McDonalds is pretty good. It's certainly their favourite balance with price and quality, these are proper black coffee drinkers too, not the bucket of sugar & cream types.
some of my "just black coffee" friends tell me the same thing - mcdonalds coffee is a good combination of taste and value. they all prefer something else, but mcd ends up being the 'go to' because it's known, it's not bad, and doesn't cost too much (which, typing that out, is probably the same for many of their menu items - not 'best in class', but a decent enough product).
I'll vouch. It's cheap, black, and hot. All a proper coffee really needs to be. McDonalds is also focused on churn. Get up, say what you want, get out. None of the half-pump soy chai latte no whip cinnamon dust in the freezer for 1.5 seconds kind of wackiness. Just a blearily slurred "small coffee" will get you what you want.
My coffee drink of choice is a plain hot latte (good black coffee is also fine). McDonalds coffee is fine, but not as consistent as a Starbucks. With McDonalds you're a bit at the whim of the machine and if the person operating it has done all the right steps. McDonalds is also a $1 or more less expensive.
Think you're right about Coca Cola re Starbucks, though perhaps they've stalled because their business has typically revolved around logistics / volume rather than brick and mortars...?
I’m kind of surprised post-sales tax nexus Amazon hasn’t bought a coffee chain yet. Starbucks might be too big to do comfortably, but a combination of some higher end local brands (Intelligentsia, Philz, etc) aggregated into some overarching metabrand would be interesting. Let the cafes run everything as they have, with infinite capital available, and focus on providing additional value added services on premise (obviously lockers but maybe some next-gen amazon services).
Philz would almost make sense if they could put 1Gbps connectivity into AWS and specifically base the performance of the deal on AWS signups.
They've got Peets, Mighty Leaf, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Caribou. They also have the Espresso House chain in the Nordics, Krispy Kreme, Panera, and Einstein Bagels.
Keurig is also under their umbrella, as are a bunch of other coffee roasters, and other consumer products.
I had no idea that was a thing till now. I wish they'd open more up, looks like they only have a handful. I keep seeing book stores close in some locations and then instead of a new book store a clothing store opens up instead. I wish Amazon would open up more book stores, maybe where another one has failed it could be an opportunity to take said space and make really nice book stores.
I don't really want to see Amazon become more of a giant sadly, but I hate seeing book stores disappear.
Of the big coffee shop chains in the UK, Costa is actually my preferred one. None of them do great coffee, but Costa has the smoothest flavour which is what I prefer. I also think their paninis and carrot cake beats out the other offerings.
Indeed, and Australia demonstrates that it doesn't have to be like that. In most similar verticals we are very similar to either the UK, the US or both. Take McDonalds: incredibly successful fast food shop in Australia. That American success story works here, as does KFC and Domino's.
But when Starbucks arrived, it was a hilariously dismal flop because we already had sufficiently good coffee at all of our local non-chain cafes (and exceptionally good coffee at a non trivial subset of them).[1]
When Australians stop for a coffee on the way to work, a large number of us are going to a local cafe. We do have chains, but none of them command more than a very small share of the overall coffee market.[2]
Ironically, the number one coffee chain in Australia is almost certainly McCafe. And there's reason for that: the McCafe brand was an invention of McDonalds Australia to help their restaurants stay relevant in the Australian market. Because they emphasised quality from day one, the menu was native to Australian tastes, and the restaurants were already popular for their traditional fare, it has been a remarkable success. (McCafe in other countries is often little more than a brand on the cup; in Australia it's a third of the restaurant interior, with its own counter and menu. [3][4][5])
Could this be a consequence of the UK's sugar tax and an attempt to diversify as the revenue from traditional Coca-Cola shrinks? I appreciate they have no/low sugar alternate products but they must still have taken a big hit from that legislation.
The Coca-Cola Company only owns 18% of Coca-Cola European Partners, and I'd expect it'd have smaller consequences of the amount of syrup CCEP buys (given some of the movement will be to Diet and Zero).
Costa has always felt to me an also ran between the coffee milkshake chain Starbucks and the slightly more serious Caffe Nero. I wonder what Coca Cola plans to do with it?
Interesting move, and interesting infographic there about chains in Europe and US. Noted McCafe doesn't register in US stats, but maybe that's because McDonald's coffee (no small play) is really inside the restaurants and McCafe was the route in the EU for shop sizes etc
US coffee chains have a bewildering range of coffee based drinks, almost to the point where ordering a plain black filter coffee will get you weird looks.
Depending on where you are, a "regular" black coffee could also be an espresso. A drink which was made by adding water to it and removing the crema (the horror!) from it is the standard in some places. So, it's best to disambiguate it and I suppose that's why they force you to do that. To be honest, I never go to starbucks. So, I don't know if that is the case - I'm speculating from no real data.
Australia was so annoying on that front. On the whole amazing coffee, but no one served filter or french press coffee, After two weeks I was dying for a nice large cup of black coffee.
The big US chains are very similar to the big European chains. If anything the big US coffee chains, especially Starbucks, arguably originated the model that the big European chains are following almost as a template. The late-20th-century European chains like Baresso, Costa, Nero, etc. do like to play up an "Italian" influence (hence the vaguely Italian names), but in practice their management strategy was pretty much to clone Starbucks. You can see this in part because their menu range and naming tends to follow the US style rather than the Italian style (e.g. Costa's "macchiato" and "iced cappuccino" are American imports).
Flat white is (or at least was) an Australian thing. Never seen it anywhere else (though I suppose it might be spreading). But, Starbucks has everything else (and then some).
I thought Flat White was a London thing. I know it originated from Australia, but its well known as being the overpriced banker/technology worker/lawyer/well paid person drink in London.
I was living in London only 3 or 4 years ago. I never saw it! Weird. But I'm a coffee nerd, so probably I never went to the kinds of cafes that serve it. I actually like a proper flat white -- coffee made with milk instead of water. Just never seen it outside of Australia.
You can't have looked very hard. So called "Third Wave" artisanal coffee shops hit London around 13 years ago, mostly started by Australian immigrants bringing with them the "Flat White". The flat white become such a hipster go to drink that by 2010 they were added to the Starbucks menu in London.
That's a bit harsh. I moved to London in 2013 and I remember I had to order flat white off-menu most of the time back then. Most places knew how to make it but just charged capuchino on the bill. Today it's everywhere.
It goes in cycles. If there's a good article from a new or irregular (for HN) site, you'll see a lot more articles from thast site show up on the frontpage.
Coca Cola...does it sell that colored water with sugar?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands
Gotta love them as a company, if people start buying pet rocks, they'll invest in them. Always moving with the times
