Starbucks

Too Big? Too Fat? Too Sweet? Too Distracted? Part 2

By Ronald Holden

But the past is prologue. First, this item from the NY Times: "Starbucks is taking on the thriving market for yogurt, teaming up with French dairy powerhouse Danone to create a line of yogurts that will be sold in the coffee company's stores and in grocery stores."

Yogurt! Well, I never. What is this? Penance? No, opportunity. Danone's CEO calls it a new sales channel and says he admires Starbucks for the way it interacts with its customer base. If you've visited a supermarket lately, you'll find far more of the cold case devoted to yogurt than to any other dairy product except milk itself. Danone is right: yogurt needs more elbow room, especially to make room for the new "Greek" styles. I might personally wish for healthier yogurt rather than chalky, plastic goo flavored with icky-sweet artificial blueberries, but that's just the food snob in me, wondering why so many of today's picky eaters think they can eat themselves thin.

The new Starbucks/Danone yogurts will be part of Evolution Fresh, the juice-bar concept that our Lolita picked up for a mere $30 million.

But before the yogurt gets to the stores, it's time for an update on two other product lines. First, the now-ten-year-old autumnal beverage known as PSL. Stands for Pumpkin Spice Latte. The Wall Street Journal describes it thus: "The pumpkin-spice sauce (note, not syrup, like most Starbucks drinks) made with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg spices, combines with steamed milk, espresso, whipped cream and a pumpkin-spice topping. But no actual pumpkin in the Pumpkin Spice Latte."

To me, it tastes like a warm pudding & pie filling, with a vague cinnamon aftertaste; no character, no vibrancy. But the drink has legions of fans and followers; I'm happy to let them have it to themselves.

Far better, if only too briefly, was Starbucks' big bet ($100 million) on La Boulange, a 122-unit chain of California bakeries created by a young Frenchman, Pascal Rigo. No more dry slices of pound cake! No more cold, greasy croissants! What Rigo figured out was how to bake croissants and sweet rolls, then freeze them so they wouldn't need preservatives. The individual pastries are reheated on-site in convection ovens. Wait! Stop the presses. Uncle Howard has thrown La Boulange under the bus. Dunzo. He's dumped the Frenchie for a sexier Italian, Princi. Not saying how much she cost, but you can bet it's plenty.

Early in 2016 he announced that Starbucks would close its Teavana super-stores. Except the one at University Village. But the rest, three in Noo Yawk and one in Beverly Hills, dunzo. When Teavana opened, barely two years earlier, Schultz admitted he'd paid about $620 million for the chain, most of whose stores sell tea in bulk.

The cold-pressed juice revolution Schultz was touting less than four years ago? He had Starbucks buy a company called Evolution Fresh for something like $50 million. So far, no national roll-out; just three stores. And this stuff is horrible for the environment; one $8 glass of cold-pressed juice generates three pounds of solid waste.

Remember that whey-powder drink called Vivano? Vaguely. Long-haired Italian kid, right? Remember "Race Matters"? The less said, the better. Remember Starbucks movies? Starbucks music? Remember whatever Starbucks was calling its water? Ethos?

We won't even talk about Flat White, Latte Macchiato, Starbucks wine nights, or the upscale Roastery on Capitol Hill (with pizza by Tom Douglas, no less). It's one thing to put up with the moodiness of a teenager, but this crazy corporate conduct is unprecedented. A lot of Seattle people still haven't forgiven Uncle Howard for selling the Sonics. They're the lucky ones.

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Still, the numbers are impressive: almost 25,000 stores worldwide, almost a quarter million employees, 60 million customer visits a month, over $5 billion in annual revenue. All this in the space of four decades. And yet, nowhere on its carefully curated website does Starbucks ever use the word "chain." Because Starbucks understands the unit of sale: not a single $250 million Boeing jetliner, but one cup of coffee at a time.

At the Willie-Wonka Reserve Roastery up on Pike and Melrose, a barista in a green apron steers gawkers (in awe of the bright copper chutes and transparent bins) away from the neighborhood hipsters who need their morning jolt. There's a brisk trade in breakfast bagels, but the aroma of bacon generated more complaints than sales.

Take the egg salad sandwich, which the packaging touts as "made exclusively for Starbucks." Seems simple, no? Eggs, a bit of mayo, dash of mustard, chopped pickle, right? The egg salad, for its part, contains a kitchen shelf full of familiar ingredients (mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, pickles, chives), but not enough salt. It's like eating your way through flavorless pablum, were it not for the occasional texture of arugula. I went looking for salt at the condiment bar, but what I snagged turned out to be shaker of vanilla powder. On the other hand, four or five kinds of sweetener. And more of those wooden stir-sticks that may well be recyclable but whose manufacturing process imbues them with a disagreeable chemical aroma that does not play well with hot coffee.

Back again on another morning, this time in Belltown. Three or four options within a quarter-mile radius. Somewhere I have picked up a porcelain mug with a green-mermaid logo, which I bring from home to the Starbucks down the street. "An Americano, please, and a warm almond croissant." The croissant, heated in seconds, is very good indeed. Truth is, I could do this at home, but getting out of the house feels good on a brisk autumn morning. And I swipe my $10 gift card like a boss.

Photo by Ronald Holden

November 2016

Read Part 1 of Ronald Holden's Starbucks article in our October issue.

Ronald Holden's new book about Seattle's food ecosystem, FORKING SEATTLE, is now available from Amazon.com, http://amzn.to/2cr2RwJ , or for the Kindle download, http://amzn.to/2cJapgf