Doug McIntyre noted earlier this week that McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD) is upgrading its coffee selection to include lattes, cappuccinos and other specialty drinks. It looks like the golden arches is trying to steal some market share from the green goddess of Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX). Mickey D's says that the new coffee drinks could bring in over $1 billion in sales. Put that in your cup and drink it!
The expanded coffee selection raises the question of whether this is part of a larger shift in McDonald's strategy and brand positioning. Zac Bissonnette noted a few weeks ago that McDonald's stores in Europe are going upscale, with leather seats, soft lighting and real silverware. Zac scoffed at the idea of high-end McDonald's here in the U.S., and it is hard to imagine why anyone could want to spend quality time in a restaurant saturated with the smell of McGriddles and fries, no matter how nice the lighting or shiny the spoons. It's also worth wondering whether the average McDonald's employee will be willing and able to make a good cappuccino. (It isn't that McDonald's employees are incompetent, but rather that the company likes to keep training to an absolute minimum and is loathe to provide any real skills lest the employees demand higher pay.)
But the new coffee selection indicates that McDonald's is borrowing heavily from the Starbucks playbook. The next move could be more appealing interiors in its stores (see the picture above for a look at a test store opened in Utah last spring). It is widely believed that McDonald's uses harsh lighting and uncomfortable seats to encourage customers to leave after they've bought their quarter pounders, since once they've paid, all they're doing is taking up space if they stick around. But Starbucks encourages customers to stay in their stores with comfortable seats and good lighting, and this approach has proven to be quite popular. So maybe McDonald's will soon be offering a decent seat to go with the fancier coffee.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-05-2007 @ 4:27PM
Brian Patterson said...
My son got e coli 0157 H:7 from eating a McDonalds meal in August 2002. He was on morphine for 7 days. Both McDonalds and Zurich Ins. denied any liability yet the CDC National PulseNet database found isolated and random PFGE matches. My advice to anyone is to save their reciepts and a uneaten portion of their meal for further testing and confirmation.