Forum Archive Index - September 2003

["tennyson@caverock.net.nz" <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>]

Hi Stephen,
 
> 
>I live and work in central Wellington.
> 
>There are only three Starbucks in central Wellington: Willis St,
>Lambton Quay, and the Reading complex. They do not seem to 
>be heavily patronised.
>

There are a couple of Starbucks I know of in Christchurch city.    One 
is in a closed street shopping mall.   It always seems to be well 
patronised.   There seem to be a disproportionate number of 'asian' 
and 'female' faces in there.   And many of them are 'asian females'.  
New New Zealanders and tourists assimilating the local (sic) culture?   

There is another only five minutes walk away in Cathedral Square.   
Judging by the number of back packs sitting by the outdoor tables 
many of those are tourists too.   This one isn't so popular.   But it isn't 
obviously more sparsely populated than the rival coffee shop on the 
square 100m away.

>
>The smaller standup joints - Fuel and their imitators -
>seem to be doing a much better business. You don't see many 
discarded
>SB takeaway cups compared to Coffe Supreme, L'Affare or Havana.
> 

I've only been to SB a couple of times myself.  But my impression is 
that they are porcelain mug coffee people, not chasing the paper cup 
grab and go market.

>
>Now the Wellington CBD must be one of the heaviest coffee-
consumption
>areas in New Zealand. I honestly would have expected Starbucks to 
be
>everywhere by now, and I am a little perplexed that they aren't.
>Perhaps Wellington consumers are fussier. 
>
>
>I would be most interested
>to know how Starbucks is doing in the rest of the country.
> 

I've given you the Christchurch report.  I should add that they are 
definitely not number one here.   They would be behind Robert Harris, 
who have quite a presence in the malls (Starbucks have none).   They 
would be behind the Christchurch chain 'Coffee Culture' as well.    
'Coffee Culture' have three stores (Sumner, City and Cashmere) and 
these are always very busy when I go past them.

>
>And their ad campaign on the buses is cringe-inducing. "Your happy
>place"? To me "in his happy place" means "suffered a nervous
> breakdown".
>

They do advertise do they?   Never heard any Starbucks advertising 
myself.
 
>
> Disclaimer: coffee snob.
> 

That might explain your comments.   I'm not sure Starbucks are really 
after the 'boutique connisseur ' coffee consumer.   I think they are after 
a more mainstream audience that that.   Having said that, the particular 
demographics in Wellington may mean that the 'coffee snobs' are 
indeed the mainstream in that particular market.

Starbucks sales were $22.8m in New Zealand in FY2003.  Total RBD 
sales were $298.1m.  Put bluntly, I don't think that the Starbucks will 
have that much influence on the overall performance of RBD.   KFC is 
by far the largest part of the whole operation in profitability terms.

SNOOPY




--
Message sent by Snoopy 
on Pegasus Mail version 4.02
----------------------------------
"Stay on the upside of the downside, 
Anticipate the anticipation!"




----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To remove yourself from this list, please use the form at
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/chat/forum/