MacResponse - Starbuck's Repeats on You

by Nicole Billard | January 25, 2008 at 01:30 pm
645 views | 12 Recommendations | 2 comments

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MacResponse - Starbuck's Repeats on You

MacResponse - Starbuck's Repeats on You

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Starbuck's has started a trial of $1 drip coffee with free refils in its Seattle stores.
After a late 2007 announcement by MacDonalds that they will be trying out specialty coffees and baristas (for heavens sake... really?), 'ignore them and they'll go away' isn't going to be the response of choice for Starbucks. While they try to say that it's 'not extra true, low farce, realacino' yet, they are 'testing'...

On the back end, all of their other drinks are going UP by $0.09 USD. And thier chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz has the guts to say that they know they've lost customers due to focusing on growth in the past few years. They fired the guy responsible for that error in direction and brought Schultz back.

Translation: 'Hmmm,  less customers = less $$ ... SO lets offer a bargain on cheap stuff while quietly increasing the prices on the more popular drinks = more customers = more $$!! YAY for US! '

Starbucks = 15,000 stores in 44 countries
Dunkin'Donuts = 7,300 stores in 31 countries (and the leading 'regular coffee' vendor in the us)
McDonald's = 30,000 stores in 100 countries

My advice: keep working on it, Starbucks. And keep Ronald's back in your sites... this is one celebrity death match I'm interested in seeing.



Price increases have helped shore up revenue as traffic in U.S. stores flattened and then declined last quarter for the first time since the company went public in 1992.
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Jordan Yerman
Jordan Yerman
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:51 on January 25th, 2008

The stats at the end are interesting... I didn't know that Starbucks was so relatively close to McDonalds in terms of reach.

Martha Jones
Martha Jones
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:57 on January 25th, 2008

Nicely done, Nicole. And the prices are going up! I'd like to know how much profit Starbucks makes on each of its coffees. I'm sure the margins must be BIG.

This story was created over 3 months ago, the comment thread is now closed.

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