Starbucks Coffee Supremacy And What Your Company Can Learn From It 

Before Starbucks, coffee was usually given to customers for less than a dollar or even free, and the idea of a coffee shop where you hang out or get some work done just didn’t exist. 

They completely changed the coffee culture and turned one of the world’s most readily available commodities into something people will pay an hour’s wage just to get one cup of. 

How Did They Do It? 

They tried growing by doing things the way almost all companies try, by branding themselves or creating a USP (unique selling proposition), and were growing at a rate of about one store per year. 

Then, they did something better than competing with other companies in their market. 

They created their own market. 

There is a reason that companies like apple, amazon, Mcdonalds, and Starbucks are so big. 

Because they stopped playing the game that others in the market were doing, and created their own game. 

These companies are so far ahead of their competition that you can’t even say they have competitors. It’s utter domination of a market. 

Play Your Own Game

Do you want your company to be that dominant? Maybe you don’t want to be the next amazon or Starbucks, but maybe you want to do that on a smaller scale, you do it by changing the rules of the game, and refusing to abide by the rules of the competition. 

Back in 2008 when Starbucks was getting attacked by other companies for charging too much and for having poor quality coffee, Starbucks’ Chief Marketing Officer Terry Davenport had this to say in response, “We are not going to get sucked into the ‘My coffee is better than your coffee’ price point conversation. We are going to play at a much higher level. We’re going to keep doing what we do, and we’re going to keep doing it our way.” 

It is not always about who has the better product. There is so much better coffee out there than Starbucks, for less money. They don’t care, and neither does their gigantic customer base. 

Starbucks made going to a coffee shop an experience. Everything from the layout, the music, and just the overall vibe is designed this way specifically, and no one was doing it before Starbucks. 

They even changed the names of the drink sizes and invented the pumpkin spice latte… I believe it’s a requirement to post a picture of those for social media before you drink it. 

Remember how I said above when Starbucks was playing the game with its competitors they opened about one store a year. 

It’s now an average of 4 stores a day. 

Whatever your company does, you can find ways to transcend what others in your market are doing. 

When you find out how to do it, your business will go from “Short” to “Venti”. 

For those of you non-Starbucks people, that’s small to large.

Thanks a latte for reading, I hope this has bean helpful… *Shakes head* I’m sorry that was unnecessary.