Is $9 for a Starbucks coffee a “premium experience?” The company’s CEO has defended it as such
$9 coffee?! NINE FUCKING DOLLAR COFFEE?! Moreover the Premium Experience? I want a coffee not a fucking show. I walk in to dunkin donuts and I walk out with a coffee in less than 3 to 5 minutes. Starbucks, You walk in to music that is almost too loud, 12 influencers mobbing the cake pops, A line 10 deep, 6 people waiting for a coffee, A dog and Usually a layout that makes you wonder who got drunk with the floor plans.
He explained that Starbucks is doing “really well” with Gen-Z and millennial consumers, and that the K-shaped economy — which refers to the growing disparity between high-income and low-income Americans — is not impacting Starbucks’ business, where the “average spend” is just under $10.
My guy I want my coffee flavored coffee, in a cup , not be given a sonnet , a poem or any other shit. The fact that Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol thinks getting a coffee is an experience. Starbucks trying to sell coffee as an admission fee is the same shit as software as a service. if a person drinks 1 coffee a day from starbucks 5 days a week. You are spending more than 2,349 dollars in a year.. for the same amount you can buy a BLACK&DECKER CAFÉCRAFT 12-Cup Coffee Maker for 30$ and 178 Cans of Maxwell House Smooth Bold Dark Roast Ground Coffee, 26.7 oz Canister for 13$ a Can.. 601 pots of a coffee if my math is right. Meaning A pot of coffee every day of the week and leaving enough room for Almost 2 pots every 3rd day.
The thing is , Brian Niccol Is not throwing this out for the Adults, he is throwing it out there for the “Influencers” and “Starbucks kids” He knows they will make a run on this because its a “premium coffee experience” because once the blind huddled masses hear about an EXPERIENCE.. they will run for it like the glass bear mugs that nearly get people killed at christmas.
“And then in other cases, people believe, ‘Well, this is a really affordable premium experience,’ because they’re saying like, ‘Well, it’s less than $10 and I get a really premium experience,’” he continued.
You want a premium experience? Stop drinking starbucks coffee for 24 days and Buy Dunkin instead, than with the leftover pay up front for 1 year of netflix up front. This is targeted at tiktok viral trends and sephora kids.
Niccol was named CEO of Starbucks in September 2024 and has since focused on improving the customer experience, including by installing better seating and creating a smoother pick-up process, according to The WSJ.
They forgot literally the stealing kids money for Niccol, The man should be renamed to Niccoltine, he just wants trend addicts to flood his store.
As for me, I’ll be having my own premium experience making my own coffee and using my own flavorings for 1/10th the price of the starbucks “Experience”.
Some mornings I take a peek at the news and I just read up on things while I wait for my coffee, and one article caught my attention.
Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot to AI, adds $127 million in value
Shoes to …AI ? Did I read that right. Yes I did . The first thing that came to mind was SouthPark. than The 1990s.
A Business pivots so hard that even a contortionist goes damn!
Give or take right now, AI is “hot” but, it’s as hot as running a building full of graphics cards with a failing cooling system. The thing is ALLBIRDS reads as a master class of failure. They make shoes, The shoes become popular. Allbirds leverages itself that they are the Steve Jobs of shoes and don’t read the room. Two years out they are sputtering and failing and have not become the next reebok or nike. They come up with a “brilliant” plan , They sell off all of their assets and jump on the AI train. ALLBIRD than renames themselves to NEWBIRD AI. Sure sure they likely wanted to create an image like they were a phoenix reborn from the ashes of their old company. But they missed out .. ALLbird to AIBIRD (which would of been perfect. like the mimicry of a parrot?). They could of adjusted there merch with a sharpie at that point.
But here’s the thing. A shoe maker has a soft fail, they could of sold off all of the assets that was shippable. Clearance out the shoes, Leverage out the lower markets and find out if the non tech-bro market liked the shoes and pivot there. Less risk than buying the AI lottery ticket. The fact they exited the shoe market at 39 million means they were not cratored.
They have Zero experience in the AI market. They have nothing other than cash to invest, Than they spoke the word they are going to invest an AI and than the venture vultures came. There market cap climbed to 148m . The funny thing is this is all speculative. like the .com bubble. Everyone is jumping in. NEWBIRD AI doesn’t even have land yet, they need to get in line for AI infrastructure, they need to find land that will not overwhelm local infrastructure. So right now they are selling their vision on a feverdream that by the time it comes to realization may be gone.
If ALLBIRD was a tech startup and they had some revolutionary code to help AI this would be a viable path but in the end, this is a shoe company that is buying a shovel from NVidia and trying to be the next big thing when the shovel is a kids play shovel and other companies are using construction machines in the AI market with very small to negative returns.
One last thing, “Stockholders are also asked to approve a charter amendment to remove the company’s environmental conservation public benefit and to authorize a plan of dissolution the Board could implement within 12 months.” Talk about the Theoretical take away from this. live in good nature and ecology than, setting your customer base on fire pissing on the fire and walking away from your mission statement.
For Allbird, They could of paired down the back stock . Sent shoes to influencers , built a brand on tiktok with a close enough reproduction , Kept there ecologically sounding mission statement, built an entire sector off of sephora girls and won big off of “vibes”.
The worst part of all of this, is this is an AI adjacent, that needed to talk about no technology and honestly the fucktons of money thrown at nothing. New Bird AI might be the Futures New Turd AI.
update: You know its bad when Voidzilla enters the conversation….
