Coffee, Starbucks, and Sweden

Its not exactly big news or anything but it seems that Starbucks has decided to open its first store in Sweden. Where are they going to do so? At Arlanda (Stockholm) airport. To start with a side note before I continue with this discussion on the meaning of Starbucks and so on: I used to drink Starbucks coffee about once a week when I lived in the US. It was within walking distance from my house and no other cafe´s were. Now back to the situation.

Sweden is a nation of coffee drinkers. The last time I heard any statistics concerning coffee, it was that Finland was the biggest consumer per head while Sweden was second. I grew up watching my Swedish elders consume copious amounts of the black gold (usually in percolator form). As someone noted on The Local-We can coffee!

So now comes Starbucks, which has stores all over the world and they chose to go into the Swedish market. Well almost Swedish, Arlanda Airport is pretty far from being downtown. There are already big chains that sell coffee like starbucks already in place. My wife worked for Wayne´s coffee when I met her, actually coffee can be seen as one of the reasons we are together. So what is the problem with Starbucks and I note here that I am not writing this to bash the US or anything like that. No, I am approaching this from a coffee consumer standpoint.

1. Their coffee product is not as good as what the Swedes already have. Swedish coffee is tastier and less expensive than Starbucks prices will be.

2. They have a very corporate and scrubbed identity. There is nothing unique about a starbucks cafe i.e. they are the McDonalds of coffee. Wherever you go it will be the same.

3. They are anti-labor. This means that they have been against attempts by their baristas to unionize. This kind of thinking also makes it difficult for them on the Swedish market.

4. They are anti-competition. Every corporation is. They set up as many shops in an area as possible to weed out all the competition and become the only chain (not that Swedish chains are better about this).

5. If we go back to the product part again, we can also add that they are not about supporting the individual: employees are easily replaceable and are not encouraged to be creative in their barista skills. This is where independent coffee shops hold the edge for two reasons: they are more open to innovation and they are able to do things that could be controversial in a corporate setting.

I don´t live in Sweden anymore, but if I did I would not drink Starbucks coffee. I would also try to avoid the other chains. Mass produced food is not exactly something the human race should be proud of in the way that it is sold at McDonalds and Starbucks.

Why will the Swede´s love it? Because they are afflicted by a peculiar love/hate relationship with America. They will talk garbage about it, then give them record profits as soon as the first store is opened at Stureplan.