Changing Your Stripes
The other day, a colleague asked me if a product or service could change from one archetype to another. Of course!
Starbucks is a good example. When Starbucks started out, it was a Genius: a whole new approach to the coffee shop in America (OK, not a whole new approach, but new to most of the people who first experienced it through Starbucks). It had all the Genius hallmarks, including an idiosynchratic look and language, a mental hump to get over (pay how much for a cup of coffee?), and, once over that hump, a great experience that people couldn’t believe they’d been missing.
Over the years, though, Starbucks stopped being so much of a unique experience. Other chains and local coffeehouses caught up to the Starbucks high-end experience. Starbucks started expanding like crazy, and over time their emphasis, from the consumer’s perspective, shifted. Now Starbucks isn’t selling the high-end experience so much as they’re selling ubiquity. Wherever you go, you can find a Starbucks, and get a consistent experience and high-quality coffee. But with that shift, which happened slowly, Starbucks stopped being a Genius and started being a Star.
Maybe you heard of the memo written by Starbucks founder & chairman Howard Schultz to the CEO last February. (You can see it here- ignore the comments that question the document’s authenticity; it was later confirmed by Starbucks.) In it, Schultz laments the shift of Starbucks from a special thing to a one-on-every-corner experience. As he points out, the shift was slow, and happened as the result of a million decisions, each a good decision when seen in isolation, but taken as a whole, changed the company’s focus from being “The Third Place” to a high-volume commodity.
Not to say that it’s a bad thing - obviously, it’s a great thing for Starbuck’s investors, and people who love Starbucks have many more places to appreciate it. But it has required Starbucks to change many of its operating procedures, how it trains its staff, etc. Starbucks competes with every coffee shop in town now, head-to-head, whereas it didn’t have to when it traded in a new experience.
So, question for you: what else could Starbucks have done? Once the masses of coffeehouses started selling high-end coffee drinks and a funky, inviting environment in which to drink them, how could Starbucks have maintained their specialness? How could they have been more of The Third Place?
I spent a few hours sketching in a Starbucks yesterday, they were having a special music event, playing the new Joni Mitchell album which they were also selling. I contemplated your question of how they could be more of the Third Place, and thought back to being in cafes in France and Italy, where cafes are third places. Here’s my pitch: sell wine (no other liquor) after 4 pm, since not everyone wants to drink coffee after that time. They could serve a particular brand each night (or week) and sell bottles of that brand at the counter, just like they do with music.
We just got a Starbucks within spitting distance of our house. I’m trying to figure out ways NOT to go there–it’s located between the drop-off at school and home, and involves coffee I didn’t have to make–and it will break the bank.
That said, I think the music aspect is one thing they HAVE done. Just today I talked to someone anxious for the expected Sonic Youth CD. And they’ve changed the food a bit to be more varied, as well as healthy, although the outcome of that last one, I think, is questionable.
Perhaps some kid-oriented stuff, like a kids’ corner with toys, or even a weekly storytime in a back room. Most Starbucks I see have no free seats, with most taken up by people with laptops. Parents LOVE to get out, and LOVE to drink coffee. Starbucks already has some kids’ food. Noise levels would be a problem for the laptoppers–if Starbucks could figure this out, they’d definitely have a third place for me.
[...] written a bit about Starbucks before, about how, over time, the unique Starbucks experience has become watered down to the point that [...]