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Franchise News - Article
02.01.2009
Warning, Starbucks Coffee could become a fish out of water!
Five years after his arrival in France, Starbucks Coffee suffers a failure of his American concept which doesn’t meet French customers expectations!
It wasn't from lack of trying to seduce French people, investments were important enough to open 41 café-bars, all of them located in Paris (except 1 in Lyon). According to some confidential data that the magazine Capital got, the daily receipts from some French Starbucks Coffee establishments drop down under 1000 Euros and even sometimes around 600 Euros during bad days! In 2006, after 3 years in the red zone, the French subsidiary of the giant of the coffee from America suffers a new loss of 4.1 million of Euros for a turnover coming up to 23 millions.
The marketing concept of Starbucks coffee didn’t met the success anticipated in France, How could it be explained?
However, Starbucks Coffee establishments had met the success
all over the world with a supply of 87000 recipes of coffee. However, for French
people who are used to drink a black, strong and unflavoured coffee, the
proposal of 87000 combinations of coffee is unnecessary than a real
innovation.
Moka Coffee, Coffee Latte, Cappuccino, Caramel Macchiato,
Espresso Macchiato, Espresso con Panna, Vanilla, Moka, Caramel...To take an
order became a real assault course and few customers don’t have the energy to go
all the way.
Few French drink coffee in the afternoon, contrary to Americans who drink
coffee all day long. The result is: Starbucks Coffees are
unattended from 2 p.m.!
There is an other cultural difference, a good many of
Americans like to drink their coffee while they’re walking, an habit with which
most French are resistant hence the weakness of the take away in France.
Competition made by quarters’ pubs where the relationship with customers creates
a real brake for Starbucks Coffee of which establishments
displayed a turnover particularly high.
Across the Atlantic, the
situation is hardly better: The chain of cafés Starbucks predicted to close
600 selling places (i.e. 5% of its network).
Why?: a decrease of American’s drinkable, a fierce
competition made notably by McCafé by MacDonald’s and a cannibalism
of its own cafés too close one from another in some areas.
Seen in
Capital n°199 (April 2008)
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