Starbucks, one of the best known brands in the US, is looking to potentially re-brand and redesign itself. “It’s the biggest undertaking of design of any retailer in the world.” USA Today.
In a nut shell Starbucks is going to test out severing Wine and Cheese in the evenings at its locations. It’s currently doing a test at one of its Seattle locations (I think we will stop in for some market research).
With my person experience of living around the US, my initial reaction to this news is that I’ve seen it before. Lots of coffee places have tried serving booze and its just not a volume product like coffee is. Yah sure the mark up is great, but the volume in relatively low in retail terms.
However as soon as I say that, I wouldn’t be giving Starbucks enough credit that they couldn’t pull it off. When I was younger and Starbucks had just gotten Venture Capital it seems liked the dumpiest idea I had ever heard. “Expensive Coffee”? Lets just say I’m not the only one who thought that. But I blame it more on the fact that I’m of the generation who poured Coca Cola on my breakfast cereal.
Back to Wine and Cheese, the true reason I don’t see this working is timing. Starbucks has had this idea for years and has researched it endlessly. I’m sure internally they decided against it many times, especially when times were good. (Do you remember when they said they were even going to remove items to refocus on coffee, possibly saying goodbye to breakfast sandwiches) Then the “test” is only in one location? I think we all know that isn’t going to give you an accurate test to say the least.
So I think we need to most likely chock this up to a smart move to get some additional PR and remind people that they are still there and are a good place to site down for a cup a coffee.