Starbucked

I’m not a coffee person. I prefer tea. I don’t hate coffee. I just don’t need it the way my caffeine-crazed, addicted-induced, coffee-hound friends do. And when I do drink coffee – I sip on decaf. (Yes, there is a point to decaf coffee, especially if it’s flavored. It tastes good!)

Last night a friend asked if I wanted to meet for a cup of joe. “Sure,” I told her.  “Where do you want to go?” (Silly question.)

“There’s a Starbucks down the street (of course there is). We can meet there.”

I’m reading the book, Starbucked, by Taylor Clark. I’m not far enough into the book to give a synopsis. My bookmark lies across the page titled Chapter Two, so I don’t know yet if this book is going to be a “balls-out” bashing of Starbucks and everything that’s wrong with Corporate America, or if it will tell the history of how a young and inexperienced Seattle-based coffee company, losing over a million dollars in one year (1989) with eighty-five stores, would transform into one of the largest and most profitable chains in the world. (I suspect the book will include a little bit of both.)

At the end of 2013 there were close to 20,000 Starbucks locations, globally, with a collective revenue of $14.9 billion dollars. That comes to a net income of $1.7 billion dollars. *

Christ, that’s a lot of coffee, but more importantly, that’s a lot of expensive coffee. With Starbucks opening almost two thousand new stores every year, the coffee isn’t gonna stop pouring anytime soon.

I’m curious to learn how the concept of “gourmet” coffee was sold so easily to an entire society because not only have people accepted this, but they’ve seemed to embrace it in the way of an arms-stretched-wide thank-you hug.

“Thank you, Starbucks, for introducing ‘customized’ coffee wrapped up nicely in pretentious, nose-in-the air terminology.” If someone hasn’t written an “Ordering Starbucks Coffee for Dummies” book yet, they should, because it’s kind of of ridiculous.

Last night, I ordered the coffee for me and my friend. Three times she had to tell me what she wanted  – tall, skinny, vanilla latte iced. She noticed the dumb expression I was sure was sitting across my face and said, “Don’t worry. They’ll know what you mean.”

I walked to the counter repeating the order over in my head. I waited behind two women with coupons. It took a while and the last thing I needed was more time to forget what I was supposed to say. When it was my turn, I stepped to the counter. “I’ll have a medium…errr… tall mocha…I mean latte… vanilla…ummm…skinny with ice.” Yep. I got this. (As I wiped the sweat from my brow.) And thank you, Starbucks, for forcing a chubby thirty-eight year old to use the word “skinny” in her order. Me and the rest of your svelte-challenged customers appreciate it. 😉

Now, I am not new to Starbucks. I go there more often than what my stammering over an order of coffee would have implied. But I mostly order tea (very simple) and I don’t use their stupid size labels either – short, tall, grande, venti, or trenta. It’s small, medium, large, or extra-large – thank you very much.

Which, if you didn’t know, short is used for only hot beverages and trenta only applies to iced ones. This is where I think Starbucks attracted its customers from the beginning. Starbucks appeared as an exclusive club where only those “in the know” knew not only the correct terminology, but the precise word-order when ordering a Starbucks coffee.

It may be hard to imagine Starbucks as “exclusive” now – with tens of thousands of stores (the word’s basically out) – but I remember when Starbucks was first starting to pop up on every street corner (and then kitty-corner to that corner), and I avoided it like the plague. I thought it was super-trendy and I’m not a trendy person. I have no clue (or interest) what the latest style is. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a fashion disaster. I have left my house wearing outfits that forced people to ask if I own a mirror (and these are from people who like me). Holding a cup with the Starbucks logo on it seemed to be a fashion statement, but that wasn’t the only reason I kept it out of my hands.

I was so damn intimidated at the mere thought of standing in front of a counter and staring at a coffee menu filled with words I didn’t know – lattes, cappuccinos, macchiatos, mochas, and not to mention all the different ways one could order these new drinks –  no foam (wet), foam (dry), extra shot, skinny, iced, hot, vanilla, hazelnut, caramel – so many choices!

I stayed away, but I seem to have been the only one because here we are and I need to know how we got here. Why are we so willing to shell out ridiculous prices for coffee?

I used to work with a young woman who was a single mom and I knew money wasn’t flowing freely for her, yet, every morning she’d walk into the office carrying a big ole’ cup of Starbucks. For the sake of easy math, I estimate that she spent four dollars per coffee (including possible tip). One cup a day, five days a week, for fifty-two weeks is a total of just over a thousand dollars a year. (And that’s only based on the coffees I actually saw her drink.) I worked with this woman for five years. That’s over five thousand dollars a single, struggling mother spent on coffee and I’m pretty certain she had no IRA, Roth or Traditional, no college fund, and no rainy-day savings account. But every morning she had her Starbucks coffee.

Is it that much of a novelty? Still? I read in Starbucked that the company’s research department tries to anticipate what colors will be popular a year in advance so they can have flavors that will match the “outfits of trendy customers.” Really now.

God help a society comprised of people who will choose a beverage based on the color of their shirt or tie, but I’m frightened this might work. If Starbucks can market themselves so that people who really can’t afford their coffee buy it every day anyway, then who’s to say they can’t get a woman to buy a specific-flavored drink because it goes superbly with her skirt?

But that woman will never be me, and for more reasons than the fact that I don’t wear skirts.

As I write this blog, I am drinking a decaf coffee from McDonalds and it tastes better than Starbucks. And the best part  – it only cost me $1.39 and that was for a venti…Er, I mean a large.

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

*Source for sales figures provided by m.nrn.com