KEY POINTS:
If proof were really needed that Starbucks is taking over the world, then it has just arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe in the form of The Two Closest Starbucks in Britain, a show in which comedian Owen Powell, with the aid of a pedometer, reveals his mission to
find the two branches of chain that are nearest to each other in the UK.
There are precisely 108 steps, Powell reveals, between the two branches in London's Villiers Street, just off the Strand, though that's nowhere near the closest.
You need to visit the show to find out which they are.
The apparently irresistible growth of a corporation which began life as coffee joint run by three mildly hippy coffee enthusiasts in Seattle's Pike Place Market in 1971, showed no signs of relenting yesterday when it declared its intention to go into battle with its brand in the supermarkets.
Such is the power of the Starbucks name that a cup of coffee now costs three times more at one of its outlets than at a normal coffee shop in New York, and commands a similar premium in London.
But the Starbucks consumer products group believes that the company is still far off maximising its opportunities to sell the coffee chain's branded goods to outside retailers.
The main potential, according to the group's president Gerry Lopez, comes from the sales of Starbucks coffee beans, or packaged coffee, to educated coffee buyers in supermarkets, who are fuelling a 10 per cent growth in the sale of premium quality coffee, while overall coffee sales are flat.
"We are far from hitting the limit on this thing," said a gung-ho Mr Lopez.
"Clearly, there is a lot of runway down there."
Starbucks is already making money by selling its products in other people's shops.
It sold 25.4 million kg of packaged coffee at US supermarkets and other retailers last year and its packaged coffee, produced in a joint venture with Kraft Foods, accounts for about 4 per cent of US market share.
The attack will be on brands like Folgers, manufactured by Procter & Gamble, and Maxwell House from Kraft, which account for about 50 per cent of supermarket coffee sales.
The plans to extend its supermarket empire come amid signs that Starbucks is finally becoming aware of the drawbacks of the meteoric global expansion which has made it a target of anti-globalisation groups and internet campaigns including ihatestarbucks.com.
Last month it made a tactical withdrawal from its coffee house premises in the heart of China's Unesco World Heritage-listed Forbidden City after a Chinese state television new anchorman questioned how "a symbol of low-end of US food culture" and "an insult to Chinese civilisation" had managed to inveigle its way in there at all.
He started a petition which raised half a million signatures.
In an internal memo sent to senior Starbucks executives in February which subsequently washed up on the internet, the corporation's founder, chairman and 'chief global strategist' Howard Schultz said he worried that the seismic expansion of the Starbucks brand (from 1,000 outlets to 13,000 inside a decade) was leading to a watering down of the experience and "what some might call a commoditisation of the brand.
Some customers, Mr Schultz worries, were finding its stores "sterile, cookie-cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about coffee."
If he needed proof of this, it arrived when Consumer Reports, an American magazine that publishes reviews of consumer products, rated McDonald's coffee more highly than that sold at Starbucks.
The corporation also lost first place in brand consultancy Brand Keys' annual study of US consumer loyalty in the coffee-and-doughnuts category to Dunkin' Donuts.
Some analysts simply believe the firm is overstretched.
"Our research shows that customers are defecting," said Robert Passikoff, of Brand Keys.
Mr Schultz has called for a return to its 1970s roots - a long journey for a brand which was initally so bohemian that the twin tailed siren on its famous logo was topless before some long hair was hastily added - and last year the firm temporarily and controversially reintroduced that original brown logo, naked siren and all, on paper hot beverage cups.
The firm is by no means guaranteed a clean run at the supermarkets, in its new push for profit.
Procter & Gamble has also just announced that it is going into partnership with Dunkin' Donuts to produce lines of coffee for sale at retailers.
This is perceived by analysts as a major challenge to Starbucks.
But Starbucks is hoping its supermarket coffee will come to resemble its outlets, whose ubiquity was perhaps best captured in the episode of The Simpsons in which every shop bar one in Springfield mall was a Starbucks.
The last one In and Out Piercing was also on the verge of closing down, to make way for . . . a Starbucks.
- INDEPENDENT
