Starbucks's business strategies nationwide and in New York have not been an unalloyed success. More stores means less waiting, which in turn means happier customers (though somewhere in New York right now an incompletely caffeinated customer is complaining about standing in line at a Starbucks). Knapp, a restaurant consultant in New York. ''The stores are their marketing,'' said Malcolm M. Instead of spending heavily on advertising, Starbucks uses its stores to promote itself - in effect, turning each store into a kind of billboard.
Within a small radius of those stores are five other Starbucks (including two on either side of Union Square), as well as two Barnes & Noble bookstores with cafes licensed by Starbucks. There are, for example, two Starbucks shops in Astor Place. In New York, said Alan Hilowitz, a regional Starbucks spokesman, ''People literally will not cross the street to get coffee.'' (It probably did not hurt that Howard Schultz, the company's chairman, was raised in Brooklyn.) Among other things, New Yorkers demand an unusual degree of convenience. The Beat generation coffee houses in Greenwich Village were about poetry and protest, not coffee, and well into the 1980's New York restaurants responded to a request for decaffeinated coffee by placing a packet of Sanka on a saucer.īut Starbucks noted some facts about New Yorkers, and turned them to the company's advantage.
Until relatively recently, coffee in New York meant stamina-enhancing fuel. ''They are resistant to chains and they do favor their own native concepts and brands.'' ''They have the luxury of many choices,'' she said. City dwellers are famously impatient, and they pride themselves on their discerning tastes and disdain for off-the-rack conformity, said Arlene Spiegel, a restaurant consultant. Damian have often turned a frosty shoulder to out-of-town brands, as three chains based in the Southwest - EatZi's Market and Bakery, Boston Market and California Pizza Kitchen - have learned in recent years.
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