It used to be that it was just coffee- Java...Joe...Go Juice. It came from a can, Mom threw the grounds into the percolator...done deal. No longer. Coffee, the drug of choice for millions such as myself, is a huge multi-billion dollar industry. Man, with a good business plan and the ability to market coffee into a hip, trendy, upscale legal drug, you really CAN rule the world. After all, you've got a legal, borderline-addictive drug. Could there be a more perfective business opportunity- an eager, captive market willing to pay just about any price to get their fix? (Hey, I resemble that remark....)
BEND, ORE. (CNN/Money) – Starbucks debuted in Paris on Friday, marking its first entrée into France.
A 20-ounce coffee served in a paper to go cup may fly in the face of French café culture. But then again, so did two all-beef patties served on a sesame seed bun. That didn't stop McDonald's from selling le Big Mac, complete with fries for the French.
It's fitting then, that on Friday the Economist magazine launched its "Tall Latte Index." Like its counterpart the Big Mac Index, which the Economist launched in 1986, the new ranking is meant to show how currency-exchange rates translate to actual purchasing power.
Quite simply, the index shows how many lattes (as opposed to Big Macs) U.S. dollars buy in a given country when exchanged for the local currency....
Now comes the latte. Starbucks uses the same formula to appeal to caffeine freaks in 34 countries, and innumerable languages. (Let's see, what's the French term for "yuppie"?)....
Oddly enough, both the Starbucks latte and the Big Mac cost $2.80 in the United States. Yet, in a number of countries there's a significant price gap between the coffee and the burger.
Some will complain about "corporate coffee" and the relatively low wages that Starbucks pays it's employees. The reality, though, is that Starbucks has followed the same model that allowed McDonald's to become a worldwide household name. Besides, the coffee is damn good....
One of the things I found most amusing about my time in the former Yugoslavia was the McDonald's in downtown Belgrade. A majority of Serbs professed to hate America, but there was generally a line of many of those same Serbs outside the McDonald's. Starbucks is certainly heading down the same path- and what, really, is so wrong with that? OK, so it's not your father's 25-cent cup o' joe, but then life is too short to drink bad coffee, no??
Now, if you don't mind my (yes, it's Starbucks) coffee is done brewing....
