{"id":209804,"date":"2010-01-21T15:17:38","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T20:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33964"},"modified":"2010-01-21T15:13:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T20:13:02","slug":"starbucks-stock-perks-up-with-via-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/209804","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks Stock Perks Up with Via Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starbucks Via instant coffee has not “changed the way people drink coffee”<\/a> as Howard Schultz predicted. But it has changed something equally dear to Schultz: The company stock price, which has tripled in the last nine months.<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s easy to forget that Starbucks, which once grew along the streets
\nand stripmalls of suburbia like crabgrass soaked in MiracleGrow, posted
\nnegative sales for more than a year. The company was facing steep
\ncompetition from McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts who were offering cheaper
\nand better coffee (respectively). But rather than double down on
\ndouble-shot mocha specials, Starbucks closed stores, cut suppliers, and
\nrolled out an Instant Coffee. <\/p>\n

The initial reaction was mockery —
\n“Starbucks coffee wasn’t already<\/i> making instant coffee?” and “How many
\npeople are going to order a
\ntriple-no-whip-lite-ice-skim-white-chocolate-mocha and decide they’d like a pack of instant to go with it?” — and so on. But now
\nStarbucks is laughing all the way to the bank after a record quarter<\/a>. Following McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts down-market turned out to be a wise investment.<\/p>\n

On a closing note, here’s Schultz:<\/p>\n

\n

“We lost our way,” he said. “We went back to start-up mode,
\nhand-to-hand combat every day” to find it…he uses phrases like “the
\nauthenticity of the coffee experience” and “the romance, the theater of
\nbringing that to life.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m with this<\/a> Gawker commenter: What exactly is the authenticity of the coffee experience? <\/i>Especially when you’re crediting your record quarter to higher-than-expected sales of instant coffee?<\/p>\n



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Starbucks Via instant coffee has not “changed the way people drink coffee” as Howard Schultz predicted. But it has changed something equally dear to Schultz: The company stock price, which has tripled in the last nine months. It’s easy to forget that Starbucks, which once grew along the streets and stripmalls of suburbia like crabgrass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}