Starbucks Closes Over Seventy Per Cent of Its Australian Stores
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Starbucks was once making news by its store openings and global expansion. Now, it is the reverse. In Australia, Starbucks will be making a strategic retreat:
“Starbucks on Tuesday admitted defeat in the race to win a large slice of the Australian coffee market when the US chain said it would close 61 “underperforming” stores out of its total Australia portfolio of 84.”
link: Starbucks taste defeat in Australia
That would mean that over seventy per cent of the Australian stores are “underperforming”. Starbucks’ woes may reflect the poor economy nationally and internationally. There is simply not enough disposable income to justify the cost of a cup of coffee, when that price would buy the equivalent of a week or more of grocery store coffee beans.
Catherine Forsythe
5 Comments
Marcus Hamaker
July 29th, 2008
at 3:34pm
It’s really strange to me that people would pay the exorbitant prices that Starbucks charges. I admit to the occasional ‘treat’, but most people get their daily coffee there. Here in Canada we have Tim Horton’s and it’s by no means the same cup of coffee. It’s a real American style coffee made from an excellent bean. There is little work to make a pot of coffee and so the prices are a lot less. And I must say, 95% of the time it’s the coffee that I would prefer!
Dennis McClune
July 30th, 2008
at 5:39am
Maybe “underperforming” means that Sussies are
just showing they have better taste than Americans
I’ve always thought Starbucks coffees were over roasted
and bitter….and certainly not worth the price.
Even in Seattle there’s better roasters…Like Peets.
Greg Sherwin
July 30th, 2008
at 2:49pm
That’s a red herring. Starbucks had no business in Australia to begin with. Just look at their failed New Zealand efforts a few years prior.
The economy is the catalyst, but the root cause is that it was a bad decision from the get-go. Coffee standards are so much better for espresso in Australia for what Starbucks offers that they had no choice but to sell only to the tourists, business travellers, and expatriates in major metro centers that don’t know any better.
Buffet
July 30th, 2008
at 7:08pm
It just goes to show that, once again, Australians are smarter than Americans!
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at 1:02pm
[...] reality is that Starbucks is feeling the economic turndown. There are store closings, nationally and internationally. It is a time of ‘negative growth’ and those store [...]