March 6, 2009--EggBuckMuffins
Plan to get on line early Tuesday morning at your local Starbucks because that’s when they will roll out their new breakfast menu.
For a nickel less than four bucks, you’ll be able to get your egg and bacon sandwich, either a cup of oatmeal or coffee cake, and of course coffee.
At Starbucks? All for the price of a Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino? What the hell’s going on here? First McDonald’s starts serving lattes, next Dunkin’ Donuts begins to make fresh espresso, and now Starbucks is about to offer up its own version of an Egg McMuffin.
This only proves how messed up the economy is. There’s no way my Starbucks would see itself in competition with McDonald’s or, worse, Dunkin’. But here they are. It’s come to this.
We all know the story—a couple of teachers and a writer started Starbucks in one small storefront just off the Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971 where it sold robust coffee—just coffee, no Frappuccino-ey things—in actually crockery, not paper, cups. Coffee with real flavor. Not that watery stuff that passes for java in the typical diner.
Word spread, people lined up, and before too long there were more than 16,000 stores in the US and in 44 countries around the world, employing 172,000 baristas, among others.
An incredibe American success story. And all basically about fancy coffee.
Now, with sales declining, they not only have closed 1,000 stores and laid off thousands of workers, but from this report about breakfast food items, they are scrambling to retain their old customers, who are now more cost-conscious, and attract new ones, who in the past wouldn’t have thought to set foot in a Starbucks, thinking it to be too yuppified and expensive. (See linked New York Times story for more details.)
So Starbucks set its “food development team” to work to create two breakfast sandwiches. And over a year of hard work and experimentation they came up what we will see unveiled next Tuesday.
You may wonder what took so long? It should have been a piece of cake--first of all, they had the McMuffin to inspire them; but even with that prototype to poach, they quickly concluded that they didn’t want their version to be so shiny and perfect-looking. So factory-made. Even though, to be realistic and to bring it in for under $4.00, they also had to, truth be told, manufacture it in central plants, freeze it, and ship it out to all the however-many Starbucks would ultimately remain after all the sad contracting.
They needed to mix the eggs and Parmesan cheese in huge vats, pour the results into tins, bake them, freeze them, and then truck them to distribution centers where they would be assembled in a way that would make the concoction look freshly made in order to appeal to Starbucks’ discerning customers.
The first sandwich the team came up with had its problems. Like its progenitor, it too appeared manufactured. So back to the drawing board they went. Rather, back to the baking tin, which they refabricated so that it would have an irregular shape—sort of like the look of a real egg.
On Tuesday we’ll see how things turned out.
But there is a further problem—let’s call it cultural. Up to this point Starbucks, including through its extravagant pricing (after all, their basic item is a cup of coffee in a paper cup), has wanted to appeal to a version of an elite clientele, to distinguish itself from the neighborhood hash-house. Now they need to lure some of those folks from across town.
How will the two mix? Starbucks doesn’t plan to stop offering their $4.00-a-cup confections, but how will they manage to make their traditional latte-sucking Liberals and their new Joe-the-Plumber customers comfortable sitting side-by-side?
If Starbucks manages to pull this off then maybe, just maybe Barack Obama can get Nancy Pelosi (from California where there are 2,500 Starbucks) to make nice with John Boehner (from Ohio, where there are many fewer Starbucks) so that they, in a bipartisan way, can work and play well together.
OK, I know, I’m dreaming.
I guess I must be over-caffeinated.
For a nickel less than four bucks, you’ll be able to get your egg and bacon sandwich, either a cup of oatmeal or coffee cake, and of course coffee.
At Starbucks? All for the price of a Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino? What the hell’s going on here? First McDonald’s starts serving lattes, next Dunkin’ Donuts begins to make fresh espresso, and now Starbucks is about to offer up its own version of an Egg McMuffin.
This only proves how messed up the economy is. There’s no way my Starbucks would see itself in competition with McDonald’s or, worse, Dunkin’. But here they are. It’s come to this.
We all know the story—a couple of teachers and a writer started Starbucks in one small storefront just off the Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971 where it sold robust coffee—just coffee, no Frappuccino-ey things—in actually crockery, not paper, cups. Coffee with real flavor. Not that watery stuff that passes for java in the typical diner.
Word spread, people lined up, and before too long there were more than 16,000 stores in the US and in 44 countries around the world, employing 172,000 baristas, among others.
An incredibe American success story. And all basically about fancy coffee.
Now, with sales declining, they not only have closed 1,000 stores and laid off thousands of workers, but from this report about breakfast food items, they are scrambling to retain their old customers, who are now more cost-conscious, and attract new ones, who in the past wouldn’t have thought to set foot in a Starbucks, thinking it to be too yuppified and expensive. (See linked New York Times story for more details.)
So Starbucks set its “food development team” to work to create two breakfast sandwiches. And over a year of hard work and experimentation they came up what we will see unveiled next Tuesday.
You may wonder what took so long? It should have been a piece of cake--first of all, they had the McMuffin to inspire them; but even with that prototype to poach, they quickly concluded that they didn’t want their version to be so shiny and perfect-looking. So factory-made. Even though, to be realistic and to bring it in for under $4.00, they also had to, truth be told, manufacture it in central plants, freeze it, and ship it out to all the however-many Starbucks would ultimately remain after all the sad contracting.
They needed to mix the eggs and Parmesan cheese in huge vats, pour the results into tins, bake them, freeze them, and then truck them to distribution centers where they would be assembled in a way that would make the concoction look freshly made in order to appeal to Starbucks’ discerning customers.
The first sandwich the team came up with had its problems. Like its progenitor, it too appeared manufactured. So back to the drawing board they went. Rather, back to the baking tin, which they refabricated so that it would have an irregular shape—sort of like the look of a real egg.
On Tuesday we’ll see how things turned out.
But there is a further problem—let’s call it cultural. Up to this point Starbucks, including through its extravagant pricing (after all, their basic item is a cup of coffee in a paper cup), has wanted to appeal to a version of an elite clientele, to distinguish itself from the neighborhood hash-house. Now they need to lure some of those folks from across town.
How will the two mix? Starbucks doesn’t plan to stop offering their $4.00-a-cup confections, but how will they manage to make their traditional latte-sucking Liberals and their new Joe-the-Plumber customers comfortable sitting side-by-side?
If Starbucks manages to pull this off then maybe, just maybe Barack Obama can get Nancy Pelosi (from California where there are 2,500 Starbucks) to make nice with John Boehner (from Ohio, where there are many fewer Starbucks) so that they, in a bipartisan way, can work and play well together.
OK, I know, I’m dreaming.
I guess I must be over-caffeinated.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:38 AM
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