Starbucks is adding four flavors to its Via instant coffee portfolio — vanilla, mocha, caramel and cinnamon spice — beginning this fall.
Via launched about a year ago with two black-coffee flavors: Italian roast and Colombia. The company has since added decaffeinated and iced coffee versions. Starbucks is new to flavored coffee, having launched Natural Fusions, its first flavored coffees earlier this summer.
“When we looked at what our consumers were drinking outside our stores in terms of brewed coffee, we knew they were consuming flavored coffee and that was a place we didn’t play,” said Aimee Johnson, vice president of strategic coffee initiatives at Starbucks. “But there weren’t any natural flavored products.”
Despite a near omnipresence in America’s urban areas, Starbucks has a surprisingly small piece of the brewed coffee market at just about 5 percent.
The company estimates that 60 percent of its customers drink coffee with flavor, and until recently, that meant they had to drink another brand. When Starbucks asked their existing customers if they’d drink a flavored product if they made one, 75 percent of them said yes.
“It’s a sizable opportunity for us,” Johnson said. “We feel it’s going to be very incremental to the business.”
What hyperbolic grandstanding. Just the fact that they are only targeting instant coffee, negates the validity of the new additions. If you were to compare the benefits provided by brewed to that of instant it would be quite evident that coffee drinkers treats their palettes well. Starbucks focuses on a small number of flavors that lost their excitement in coffee during the recession. Were Starbucks the only chain to do so? Ever consider the fact that replacing those few flavors may have saved the coffee chain and all of it’s other flavors. Did any other coffee shops reduce their payroll during this time, or even close their doors.
As for the increases in brewed coffee consumption, that is a nationwide trait since the socialized health care. People should have planned accordingly in their own lives to accommodate the extra flavors. The plan was discussed widely in the media and no one should be surprised by the inflation of flavors. Customers should protest at the White House not Starbucks. Starbucks has a good brewed coffee, and for them to continue to be able to provide that for it’s customers of course there would be an increase as they seek to create a balance.
It blows my mind that these customers are planning to try instant. They are out of energy, yet Starbucks has continued to serve them brewed coffee. It seems that Starbucks has showed loyalty to them during the negotiations, yet the customers are quick to bite the hand that feeds them. They should be grateful to have even one coffee flavor in this economy, Starbucks has no obligation to keep them in flavor-town and there are many people that would love the opportunity to drink plain black coffee. Look at the coffee shops that needed bailouts during the recession due to mismanagement. Starbucks did not have to close any doors during the economic downturn.
I would think the leaders of the Chicago communities wouldn’t be so naïve as to be swayed by instant coffee propaganda. They are supposed to be the wise and levelheaded guides of society. What a shame! Go brewed coffee!