Friday,
November 30, 2007
In
The
ANNOTICO Report
Italians
adore their coffee and caffes, or bars as they're
often called, and it's impossible to imagine any street, piazza, shopping
centre, train station, office building, even prison, without them. But not just
any coffee in any bar will do. The coffee itself must be of the highest quality
-- strong but not overly bitter -- and cut with the proper amount of steamed
milk that leaves only a thin layer of froth on the top.
It
absolutely must be served in little white china cups on little white saucers.
It must be made and served quickly and cost little (in
In other words, the Italian coffee experience is everything Starbucks is not.
Italians who travel not only consider a Starbucks coffee "muddy
water", and the paper cups vs "white
china cups on little white saucers" are declasse.
And most important there is not the "socializing" experience.
The
irony is that Starbucks was inspired by the Italian coffee experience. In the
mid-1980s, company founder Howard Schultz visited
Starbucks has some 14,000
outlets in 43 countries, and for several years has been rumored to
consider entering
The
moment I realized Starbucks would not dare invade
Italians adore their coffee and caffes, or bars as
they're often called, and it's impossible to imagine any street, piazza,
shopping centre, train station, office building, even prison, without them. But
not just any coffee in any bar will do. The coffee itself must be of the
highest quality -- strong but not overly bitter -- and cut with t he proper
amount of steamed milk that leaves only a thin layer of froth on the top. It
absolutely must be served in little white china cups on little white saucers.
It must be made and served quickly and cost little (in
In other words, the Italian coffee experience is everything Starbucks is not.
Italians who travel consider a Starbucks coffee muddy
water. They don't like to chug half a litre of coffee
out of big paper cups. Paper cups are inelegant and are needed only if the
coffee is to be removed from the premises. No Italian could imagine taking a
coffee outside the bar. A Starbucks shop, oddly, is not filled with the aroma
of coffee (I'd like to know if that's intentional). Starbucks is expensive and
the shops double as lounges that you in effect rent. You can pay $4 for a
coffee and linger for two hours reading a book or pounding the laptop. Italians
tend not to linger in coffee bars. Of course, Starbucks could clone a proper
Italian coffee bar in
I keep hearing rumours that Starbucks, which has some
14,000 outlets in 43 countries, will conquer
The irony is that Starbucks was inspired by the Italian coffee experience. In
the mid-1980s, company founder Howard Schultz visited
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