Dylan Salisbury’s weblog

I heard the flabbergasted hosts on NPR asking that this morning, discussing Starbucks’s experiment with an unbranded store. But it seems like a flawed question:

In the suburban areas I prowl for coffee, the local places consistently struggle because they won’t invest in prime real estate like Starbucks does. Starbucks and McDonald’s have high traffic locations near big box stores and Freeway exits and they’re selling lots of coffee.

Now that Starbucks has set a national standard for quality and service of coffee drinks, and McDonald’s is moving into that market along with its own competitive advantage, why wouldn’t Starbucks move upscale?

And in the restaurant business, there’s lots of precedent for diverse brands with common ownership, though not corporate ownership.

I think this is a sign of the future, unless something about Starbucks’s brand inspires a backlash. But I think only college towns really have a strong preference against corporate ownership of coffee shops.