Starbucks Has a Pumpkin Spice Latte Problem in China
www.nytimes.com
For years, Starbucks was the dominant coffee chain in China. Now rivals offering local flavors and cheaper prices are crushing the company’s bottom line in its second-largest market.

Good article from the New York Times.

Summary

Starbucks China is losing customers at a very rapid pace. Starbucks corporate executives are angry. Brian Niccol, the new $100 million CEO of Starbucks, sounded the alarm in October, calling the competition “extreme”. For the Chinese Lunar year, Starbucks released a pork flavor latte. It cost more than $9 and was widely seen as a disaster.

Billionaire Howard Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, insisted that Starbucks would not enter a price war in China. He claimed “as chinese customers become more knowledgeable about coffee, they will want to upgrade from lower-end or discounted products”

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
      2·
      18 days ago

      I didn’t know about the US but in Canada McDonald’s uses the supplier that used to supply Tim Hortons back before their coffee was enshittified by the corporate grindhouse, which makes McDonald’s coffee about the best option short of true coffee houses

    • viking@infosec.pub
      1·
      18 days ago

      I’m not so sure about that, they studied Starbucks’ quasi-monopoly for quite some time and then decided to beat them with better coffee.

      So at least they had a plan, unlike KFC with their “me too” approach. That stuff is so bad I’ll rather risk headaches on a 10h flight than to refuel with that garbage.