You Can't Buy Happiness...But You Can Buy Coffee

When I had to think about a company I had bad experiences with, I struggled to answer one question: Can I truly dislike a company where I consistently and willingly toss my money down their drain? After much thought and another $4.40 spent, I decided, “Heck yes I can.” For years, I have been the target of your brilliantly tuned marketing aim bringing with it the delicious drinks, the much-needed drive thru ease of ordering, and don’t even get me started on your delicious chai tea. It’s been said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So, my dear, dear Starbucks, this one is aimed at you.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a coffee cup nearly glued to my hand at all times. It is part of my being just as much as anything else and like many of my millennial cohorts, I am a coffee fiend. But when you dig beyond the superb marketing and easy access to the product you have to ask, am I paying too much for the product or the experience? The true answer is both. I am paying for a nice twenty-ounce latte and the pleasant experience with a barista as I roll through the drive through listening to my Spotify playlist. To put it plainly, I pretty much love you guys and considering our ten-year relationship I’m not ashamed to admit it.

You may ask now, if you love it so much what’s the deal here? Well, allow me to spill the tea.

You have done well…exceptionally well. Considering this is a franchise that had only 28 stores in the surrounding Seattle area in 1989 and has become a world-wide phenomenon with 27,339 stores now and growing. With that level of success, I tip my hat to you, but what happens if you begin to saturate your market and cannibalize your own sales? How do you keep the numbers game in your favor? The answer is CUSTOMERS. But have you already begun to slide in that department as well? Perhaps it was your decision to open college campus branches, your gimmick drinks (which have to taste horrible), or perhaps it’s just the loss of customer-to-barista service that has me feeling the coffee blues.

Let’s take a look at your rise on the college campus, shall we? With over 300 physical stores and a test-run coffee truck idea, maybe you think you’re doing us a favor? I hate to break it to you, but Joe from my biology lecture makes a sorry latte. In the classic quality or quantity struggle, is it hurting the brand name when you consistently get an over-priced and ill-made product just to boast you have more stores in the US than McDonalds? Perhaps not. I can attest that no drink I have purchased on my college campus tastes right. Maybe it’s me being hypersensitive to it all, but have you ever heard of a Starbucks not having any coffee brewed? Well, thanks to the Downing Student Union location at WKU, I sure have. Additionally, and this even goes for the main branches, it is called re-stocking…and with the tools available today I BEG OF YOU please reorder the sugar-free syrup regularly. Bless.

Should we even tread down the treacherous path that brought us the “mermaid” frappuccino? Seriously, you have now successfully appealed to 6-year-olds everywhere and I applaud you. Diluting the menu with drinks like the Christmas tree, apple pie, Zombie, and Butterbeer (okay even I admit I could get into this one Harry Potter is my stuff) has radically changed my ability to stomach looking at your marketing campaigns. When you decidedly add these drinks to your menu and force the drive-thru to be full of mothers getting their 13-year-old daughter a glorified milkshake in the trademarked cup and green straw, do you understand how much you are cheapening yourself? The fact a coffee brand now is forced to serve “crème-based” and “coffee-like” drinks is sickening (especially to me, a true caffeine purist).

As far as your service? It could be better, much better. What people of the millennial generation love is the personal touch and attentiveness. For your brand specifically, this means take the 10 seconds to write my name on the cup in some semblance of an Instagram-worthy scrawl and please (for the love of coffee beans everywhere) listen to my order to avoid the incident of an incorrect drink. As a business who services as many customers you do per day, I could see the advantage to stickers and faster movement on the cashier end, but at what cost? Do you have significantly fewer drinks having to be remade due to error? Likely not considering the number of times I have had to drive back around your establishments to let “Adrian” know she slid me the worst thing I have ever tasted and definitely did not order. So, what is the purpose from shifting away from this personal touch? As your former president, Howard Behar, said, “We’re not in the coffee business serving people, we’re in the people business serving coffee.” As you already do not offer the now stereotypical latte art as highlighted by your competition in the local coffee houses, maybe you should rethink your personal touch as a whole.

Basically, what I have to say is simple, reinvent your customer service and rapport, or perhaps in the future you will lose your edge in this market as you have begun to see. For the foreseeable future, I will never rank my Keurig in place of your product, but that could change as my time becomes more valuable and if I ever convince myself spending $35 a week on coffee is ridiculous. When the gimmicks and trends fade, what say you then dear Starbucks? To you I say, hit me with your best shot…no really please add an expresso shot to the coffee I will inevitably be ordering come 8 a.m. on Monday.

Photo References:
http://fortune.com/2017/03/30/starbucks-cashier-free-store-headquarters/
https://mashable.com/2016/06/21/kermit-the-frog-tea-lizard-good-morning-america/#iyJJ4DCOvmqy
https://twitter.com/golem_13/status/923822467063468037
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/food-cocktails/a9586023/starbucks-mermaid-frappuccino/

http://favoritememes.com/news/gimme_dat/2016-12-17-9171