Starbucks, most famous for converting a $0.40 product into a $4.00 product and holding the line for years, is now trying to position itself as “reasonably priced.” The idea that Starbucks is an expensive luxury item has been, it seems, a misconception all this time. Who knew?
“There have been others that have been propagating the myth of the $4 latte, and that is not true,” she said, adding that the average price of a Starbucks latte is $3.25. “We have got to correct the misperceptions that are out there.”
Of course, this is absolutely correct. There is no such thing as a $4.00 latte. Lattes are $3.25, but the cup is $0.80.
Starbucks Plays Common Joe [The Wall Street Journal] via Asymmetrical Information
There blueberry coffee cake is all world. Sht must be 500 calories a piece though.
There blueberry coffee cake is all world. Sht must be 500 calories a piece though.
Somewhat non-sequitor, but: McDonald’s is taking over fashion week with their coffee. Sign o’ the times, SBUX. Get those Buckgriddles a’cookin’.
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/02/mcdonalds_helps_young_designer.html
$4.05 for grande hot chocolate on Fri. Milk probably cost 50 cents; chocolate maybe 25 cents. Labor, maybe 50 cents. Starfucks!
…plus their coffee tastes burnt, too.
Caribou is good but Dunkin isn’t (at least to my tastebuds).
Anyway, as you were…
4 Why’d you buy it then? Maybe because it served an immediate need and was convenient, such as right downstairs from your office, for which they pay rent, which is also in the cost. Its a little more complex than you make it seem. If the profit was in fact $2.80 their stock wouldn’t have taken a dive.
5 I can’t handle Dunkin. I’ll admit it, I find all those greasy donuts and garish colors offensive. Clearly aims for a different sort than I perceive myself to be. Which is of course part of the aspirational Starbucks thing. And which has recently been diminished, therefore trouble for S’bucks. In NY I like “Joe”, which is in Grand Central and a few places downtown.
yes starbucks should be selling all their product at cost…damned capitalists
7, Dunkin aims for New Englanders, who are a much classier sort than your Jersey ass
@7
“Aspirational???” Aspire to what?
Learning how to slurp burned vaguely-coffee-flavored swill from ugly plastic cups? Honing your converational skills by swapping bon mots with retarded barristas? Absorbing the shopping mall ambience and transmuting it into your own special style – poised, sophisticated, yet at the same time profoundly animal?
This was bound to happen sometime. Starbucks is overrated anyway. Home-brewed FTW.
10 Aspirational = not having my coffee handed to me by someone from the third world who fries donuts for a living. Not that it makes sense, but thats what its all about.
@12
I couldn’t agree with you more. The first time I walked into Starbucks and ordered a grande chai with skim milk, light on the caramel syrup with extra foam, I knew I had reached the apex of my professional career.
Who the fuck is still drinking Starbucks? Didn’t you Nancey’s get the memo, sitting at home in your underwear eating Lucky Charms for lunch is the new killing it. Hey look! A new video at RedTube, must be my lucky day. Glad I’m wearing my underwear, easy access.
Bitches always after me Lucky Charms.
SPODE
@Clown Capital
My sarcasm detector is out of whack…but I could kill 5 Starbucks Double Shots (add an extra shot as needed) on ice.
-Nominate me
I like Starbucks – it keeps in one place a good number of pretentious pricks who like prententiously bad coffee. Thus the wait at Dunkin Donuts is shorter.
Are Utah-based traders short coffee as a commodity?
They have been moving in that direction for a while… you know that boiled bike tire tasting pike’s place (the shit coffee that they sell after 12)? Evidently they made it to compete with dunken doughnuts / mcdonalds ‘lighter’ coffee. Starbucks has been getting savaged by them, this is probably at the bottom of their list of ways get back into things…
- former starbucks employee
I buy my cuppa joe at the ING Cafe.
As I stir my cream and sugar, I look around the hideously garish orange room, festooned with bicycles and furniture from 2001 A Space Odyssey, and think:”WTF were they thinking when they built these places??”
Yep, no such thing as a $4 latte, but there are assholes stupid enough to pay $4 for one.
No such thing as a $3000/hour hooker either, but there ARE $3000/hour Johns.
I have repeatedly inquired on the Starbuck’s website as to why a vente mocha costs $3.65 in San Fran, but it costs $4.71 in NYC. And don’t tell me real estate costs, financial district rents in SF are just as much as NYC. Since they refused to provide an answer after repeated requests I voted with my feet…in ’07 I bet I drank 150 of those jessies, in ’08 I prob didn’t drink 10.
21 Maybe instead of cutting back you should either fly out to SF each morning in order to buy one or have your SF office send one to you in NY via FedEx. Neither alternative is of course practical.
The problem here is that you’re focusing on purchase price parity to the exclusion of supply and demand. Back to Econ 101 for you.
What 22 is trying to say here is that the technological advances in vente mocha production shifted the demand curve so quantity supplied was less under protectionist tariffs with the country producing vente mocha’s. Columbia being said country.
SPODE
it’s all so complicated…
21
Just purchase a double shot Venti Americano, and you’ll be all set. You will never use cocaine ever again. Long live SBUX!
@22 = Genius.
@26 = @22
$2 tall Americano > $4 venti fag drink
If you’re trying to save some cash they already have low cost options on the menu. I’ll stop going there if they start catering to white trash…
@23
colOmbia not colUmbia