I vividly recall the announcement that Starbuck’s was going to introduce ‘something completely different’: Olive Oil-infused Coffee. It was the brainchild and special project of the chain’s now-former CEO, Howard Schultz. And now, Olive Oil Coffee is being dropped…
Apparently, they’ve been taking Olive Oil with their morning coffee in some parts of Italy for generations.
Starbuck’s CEO Schultz related, he had discovered the beverage During a vacation in Italy some years ago… “Oleato represents the next revolution in coffee that brings together an alchemy of nature’s finest ingredients – Starbucks arabica coffee beans and Partanna cold pressed extra virgin olive oil,” he explained.
Maggie note: I checked it out. It’s a real deal.
Fast forward…
… To 2024. There’s a new CEO at Starbucks. A very different style of guy, charged with turning the struggling chain around. He’s Brian Niccol, the 20-something brainiac who pulled Chipotle out of what some said was a death spiral, and put it on the road to growth and prosperity again.
Niccol has a whole laundry list of changes he wants to make at Starbucks. One of those is to streamline the menu, cutting under-performing items, shrinking the selection back to the basics. That’s supposed to make life simpler for customers and employees alike, speed up service, improve order accuracy and help reduce inventory costs.
And it appears the first casualty of the streamlining is Schultz’s Olive Oil-infused Italian Coffee.
At the root
The idea of revamping the menu is just one of a several core moves Niccol says are essential to the resurrection of the chain.
He calls his overall plan the ‘Back To Starbuck’s’ program. And he’s pledged to bring back not only the original fan-fave menu, but get rid of more-recently added exotic, complex and not-so-well selling menu additions. Like Olive Oil-infused espresso.
He says he’s also going to restore the classic Starbuck’s charm and community-hangout atmosphere. Something that core fans have been pointedly demanding lately. What many are calling a customer revolt exploded at Starbucks a few months ago, when them CEO Schultz announced major changes designed to chase take-out and drive-thru traffic.
The ‘Resto of the Future’
That was in line with the so-called ‘Restaurant of the Future’ business model being espoused by all the leading Fast Food chains. It’s their plan to meet – and survive – the challenges being thrown at them by a changing climate and a changing economy. Not to mention changing consumer habits and tastes, as the Millennials and later generations become the prime movers in our ever-evolving society.
But it wasn’t in line with what Starbuck’s core fans wanted. And the chain was bleeding ‘regular’ customers.
My take
I was never convinced that Olive Oil-infused Coffee was going to make any kind of big dent in the North American coffee market. Even if it was being pushed by ‘style’- and ‘trend’-leader Starbuck’s.
To Niccol’s credit, it didn’t take him too long to figure that out, either…
~ Maggie J.