Ranting about Starbucks

OK - so this all started from a conversation I had with my father-in-law. He was telling me that he heard that the biggest competition that Starbucks has is McDonald's. Now that they are serving specialty coffee's and tea's, McDonald's is taking aim at the big Buck (literally and figuratively). He also informed me that because of this apparent pressure from Mickey D's Starbucks has modified the taste they have and made it milder (read - not burnt tasting).

Now, I don't really have anything against Starbucks, except that I prefer other coffee over theirs due to the fact that I don't like the aftertaste. Some tell me that I need to 'acquire the taste', (sounds like beer) but I really prefer a smoother coffee. Funny thing though, I don't really enjoy much else that has a burnt taste. I don't like burnt french fries, I don't like burnt toast, and I don't like burnt coffee. I have to say I like Beaners better. The exception to that is when I go to really nice restaurants, they always seem to have great coffee.

Back to the rant. So I started looking for articles that would tell me about what I heard. This is what I found. Turns out that Consumer Reports actually said that McDonald's coffee is actually preferred to Starbucks. To some people I know (you know who you are) this is borderline blasphemy! The part I thought was funny though is that for years, people have developed an attitude about Starbucks, almost an elitist attitude, that if you don't like Starbucks coffee, you must really not be a coffee aficionado. It is part of the huge success that Starbucks has had over the past decade. Then when the market forces change and people really start drinking the coffee they like, Starbucks is forced to change their taste. Guess the elitist are out of luck.

In the process of looking for this information, I found this graphic. It shows both Starbucks and McDonald's and their respective global footprint. I thought it was a good use of a visual system to get a point across so I sent it off to a friend a work (with whom I chat about how to effectively show data from time to time) and he sent me back this site which shows a funny relationship between Starbucks and Walmart. It is almost an inverse relationship. If you have a higher concentration of Walmart's, you have a lower concentration of Starbuks and vice versa. Back to my thoughts on the elitist attitude.

So, this turned out to be a longer rant, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Hope you enjoyed it also! Chat at you next time.....