Starbucks: Everything's Cool, Stay Calm

Conference call this morning with Uncle Howard, who says there's nothing to worry about, really. Those Dunkin Donuts commercials, nah; America runs on Starbucks, folks. Micky D? A low-rent interloper. Cut the price of $4 lattes and you imply that Starbucks might not be a premium company after all. Coffee taste tests? Don't even think about it. Loyalty cards for sale in bulk at Costco, on the other hand, that's classy. The market lapped it up; shares jumped 8.5 percent.

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By Ronald on December 4, 2008 9:30 AM

Comments [rss]

Troy Morris

Does anyone remember Dunken Donuts here? Yeah, didn't work out so well (except in the south side). Dunken Donuts sells coffee-- with cream and sugar as the default.

It's like competing apples and really fucking nice apples.

MvB

This is an interesting moment: is the megaSBUXcorp purely a product of the boom years? Or are they going to be able to maintain hold of their "daily luxury" appeal for aspirational businesspeople? When you switch to Dunkin, you've stopped aspiring quite so much and settled on comfort.

Brad

The real story is that half the marketing staff haven't even seen the Dunkin Donut commercials, and if you ask them who their competition is, they'll always answer 'McDonalds'.