Starbucks Alliterates: Big Bold Steps with Blonde Blend

Starbucks unveils new lighter roast

In an attempt to capture a portion of the coffee drinkers who lean toward light and medium roasts (a staggering 71% in grocery coffee sales) Starbucks is giving coffee drinkers who associate its brand with dark and ‘roasty’ blends a new way to look at the siren. Two new lighter roasted blends, the Veranda and the Willow, will be beckoning for your coffee dollar under the new Blonde Roast label.

Andre Linnemann, Starbucks Master Roaster, busted out his alliteration skills when he mentioned this move for Starbucks was, “three big bold steps with the Blonde Blend” starting in January,

Both blends can be picked up at your local grocery store haunt starting January 10 and will come in whole bean, roasted and ground. And for those short on time the Blonde Blends will also come in Starbucks VIA and K-Cups.

Look for new packaging as well as Starbucks hopes to make the task of grabbing onto one of its bag of beans before heading to the cash register a bit easier. With coffee buyers spending less than a minute to make their big bean decision Starbucks hopes that by streamlining the packaging of its products by roasts, Blonde, Medium and Dark, they’ll be able to cut through the shelving clutter and chip away at the 5.6B US packaged coffee market…making the company’s bean counters (and shareholders) one happy bunch.