Starbucks Puts a Fork In It
Starbucks Puts a Fork In It
Starbucks, the coffee mega-chain, might finally be getting into the actual and real food business. They’ve done it by admitting they don’t know how, and letting the people who do have at it, and have access to their mammoth customer base. Will it work? We’ll see.
La Boulange is a bakery company that really does know how to create and consistently make and bake really delicious, fairly traditional foods in a generally French style that Americans usually come to enjoy. Hedging my bets, I add these qualifiers because their launch has been mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, long known for a love of most things French and foodism, in many forms. Starbucks bought the company, brought along the founder and seems to be letting him do what he does: make food.
What we do know is that good ingredients and time tested methods, with a few modern twists, are being whipped up into foods long known for their ability to be frozen and baked off or warmed successfully. When done right, the result is a pretty darn good “croissant square” filled with a pleasant version of creamed spinach (among other choices) that is a whole lot better than most fast-ish foods and head and shoulders above many previous Starbucks attempts that seemed somehow geared towards a space mission or someone else’s company lunch room. They never seemed to be from the same retail establishment and some of them have been downright awful (cardboard turkey sandwiches on packing material bread). Starbucks has bought other companies that had seemed to do food fairly well but it often turned out to feel like a deal for their real estate. The Good Food DNA never seemed to get passed along (as with Panera, for one).
Then there’s the juice thing. They’ve retailed other people's drinkables, to some success. But then something happened in the juice world, and Starbucks took notice.
Jimmy Rosenberg, one of the original founders of juice pioneer Naked Juice, split off from that company after it started compromising on quality ingredients. He started making his own freshly pressed juices again at Evolution Fresh, a company he built up and later sold to Starbucks for $30 million in 2011. He's still at Starbucks, though, helping the chain roll out its cold-pressed juices in 5,000 Starbucks cafes and thousands of U.S. retailers like Whole Foods.
Starbucks' next conquest: tea. It opens its first Teavana tea bar on Madison Avenue in New York Thursday, which the company promises will offer "handcrafted tea beverages, premium loose leaf teas, tea-inspired food offerings and beautifully made tea merchandise."
So will this new strategy of actually going into the food business with real life food pros gain traction and popularity enough to become a vital part of Starbuck’s huge international business? Time will tell. People have to learn to embrace foods not enhanced by artificial or the unhealthiest of means. The company will have to allow for the sorts of variables and cultural quirks common to food sold not as a commodity – as coffee with added sugars and dairy or dairy-like products can be – but as part of a healthy, wholesome, busy life.
And it will all still come with free wifi.
Photos: Starbucks (top and bottom); Clark Wolf (middle).
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