Good article from the New York Times.
Summary
Starbucks China is losing customers at a very rapid pace. Starbucks corporate executives are angry. Brian Niccol, the new $100 million CEO of Starbucks, sounded the alarm in October, calling the competition “extreme”. For the Chinese Lunar year, Starbucks released a pork flavor latte. It cost more than $9 and was widely seen as a disaster.
Billionaire Howard Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, insisted that Starbucks would not enter a price war in China. He claimed “as chinese customers become more knowledgeable about coffee, they will want to upgrade from lower-end or discounted products”
Personally, I’d like the entirety of the United States to buy local from all types of restaurants instead of letting corporations pave over our regional food cultures.
Those Chinese brands mentioned in this NYT piece are all national/international chains, massive cooperations similar to McDonald and Starbucks, not local mom pop shops…
Sure, but there is a difference letting one corporation overpower the market and supporting a national or even international business.
We got Taco Bell some years back where I live and suddenly all the actually good places died, and sure, some of them were genuine local businesses instead of just corporate chsins, but I’d much rather support anything other than some American super corporation, get a shittier product that’s more expensive, just because they have the money to push their shitty product more than some smaller, albeit corporation shit.
Most American super corporations have enough influence and power as it is. Nothing wrong if we get some competition and variety. Lesser of two evils you know.
Coffee culture in China is on another level. They have fast coffee like Luckin, Cotti, and dozens more brands, all of which are better and have more variety than Starbucks, and they have high end coffees with artisan beans, and all of them are cheaper than Starbucks. They’re not going to win there, for sure.
Big corporate just siphon money to another country and rich executives. Supporting local business, means the money stay local and they spend it back in the same community that spent it on them.
Plus the Star Bucks coffee is shit.
A pork latte sounds incredibly disgusting, what a stupid idea
At that point I thought it was an Onion article.
“Chinese people like pork, right?! And they like coffee! See where I’m going with this?!!!”
Speak for yourself.
What is it, like broth savory, or some fake candy like flavor?
I should know this?
Exactly what I was thinking. Why should I give a shit that Starbucks is failing in China? I didn’t even know they were in China.
Right? Post this in news this isn’t a YSK, and the OP fails to explain WHY YSK
Well, of course. Putting geopolitics aside, Starbucks coffee is overpriced and not good. I wonder what the CEO who commutes via private jet to work will take away from this. Likely nothing.
That’s the thing about these parasites… They get paid life changing money upfront.
Zero skin in the game.
Starbucks coffee is shit anyway. Support your local roasters and shops, or roast your own if you have the means. It’s a great and delicious hobby.
Coincidentally when I saw this post I was in the middle of roasting a batch.
Beyond supporting local businesses, Starbucks’ coffee is just objectively poor quality in comparison to that of any local roster.
As someone who worked at a local roaster, the coffee was objectively better, but the owners were trying really hard to be like Starbucks in every other way.
I wish the employees had a union, but it was a college town.
Your neighbors pay your salary. The more money in your community the more there will be for your salary.
Sometimes you’re likely to want to get groceries.
Sometimes you’re likely to want to go to restaurants.
Sometimes you’re likely to need to get housewares.
Sometimes you’re likely to need services from plumbers or mechanics or electricians.
If you choose your local community, that money stays in your community, and it’s likely to make it back to you.
If you buy from a company headquartered in a different city, the money you spend goes to that other city.
So next time you’re buying a burger and fries, check out your local restaurants.
We were a whole lot poorer when everything was only regional. We need a balance. We will be a whole lot poorer and belligerent as a species if we are totally insular.
We are actually pretty close to being able to defeat the resource scarcity of our planetary prison. Gravitational differentiation is a bitch for sequestering almost all of Earth’s heavy resources after the Theia collision and the last time the entire surface of Earth was molten. The continents are like the flux or froth that rises to the surface. Nearly all of the heavy elements on the surface of the planet are from astroid collisions that have happened since the continents formed. The thing is, there are these things called m-type asteroids that are remnants of planetesimal cores broken apart in the early formation of the Sol system. Some of these large m-type asteroids are in near Earth orbits. These are differentiated, aka concentrated with rare elements. Fully accessing just one of these has a potential to completely upend what wealth means and all of our financial institutions. It could easily dwarf all human resource wealth that has ever been accessed on the surface of Earth. Accessing this kind of resource wealth will drive us into space in the future at large scales. We already have the materials science to build O’Neill cylinders that have Earth like centrifugal gravity and are 9.1 km in diameter by ~30 kilometers long. The scientific papers establishing this were published by Dr. O’Neill in the 1970s. The only thing holding us back is the will and the resources. We only get to that future if we put aside tribalism and work together.
We don’t need this dichotomous oversimplification of all or nothing. We need balance and we need to stop the culture of unregulated unethical capitalism. Capitalism must be regulated like the drug addicted STI ridden whore that it is and handled like a worthless ragdoll because this is what it really is. Corporations are disposable worthless things. They are not people. They should be the homeless beggars. They are the fodder on the front lines of conflict because corporations and companies are not people and killing them is a great and valiant thing. New companies can fill the voids. This is the whole point in capitalism. The problem is that we have let companies rule over people and that is feudalism. It is not a democracy at all. Whores cannot lead or rule us or we fall apart. They have no ethics, no values. They would just as soon kill you, but that is okay only because they are not people and they must die with extreme prejudice. Businesses have no rights except to be useful for a time. Being established as a business must become a liability not an asset because it is within real open market capitalism. No one gets all the gambles right every time unless they are cheating and in both cases they must die.
Oh hey, glad the Chinese figured out Starbucks is bad.
I too prefer locally owned coffed stores!
… Too bad I’m from Seattle, and Starbucks pretty much killed them all.
Fuck Starbucks.
They appropriated the ‘chill local coffee shop you can hang out at all day’, ran most of those out of business, first in Seattle, then nationwide, then all over the world, and now they just run a coffee themed fast food empire.
Fuck. Starbucks.
Pork Lattes for the Chinese, coffee flavored milkshakes for Americans.
What a fucking joke.
That last line from the ex CEO is so stupid, Starbucks is the lower end coffee shop, it’s the McDonald’s of coffee. Anyone who cares about quality coffee would prefer local roasters with fresh coffee anyways
Good.
Local companies are out-competing the multinational on price, quality and local knowledge. Isn’t this the free market working as intended?
I couldn’t give a single shit what any Starbucks executive thinks about any decisions anyone else makes.
“as chinese customers become more knowledgeable about coffee, they will want to upgrade from lower-end or discounted products”
Sick burn.