Who Could Compete?

Known as the coffee giant, Starbucks has taken over the country. With its pure brew of natural beans and incomparable flavor, no other coffee shop could ever compete. Seattle’s Tully’s Coffee attempted to outrun Starbucks, but it found to be unsuccessful. Starbucks originated from Seattle and set off its popularity from there. Demi Larsen, the 25 yr old manager of Tully’s Coffee, said there was no competition for her coffee shop until Starbucks gained popularity. Ms. Larsen stated, “Starbucks opened the conversation”, with creating a designer global brand. She compared getting a Starbucks coffee as owning a Coach handbag and Gucci sunglasses to show that although Starbucks has become “designer”, she wanted to have her coffee shop maintain that same simple, original mentality.

Keeping the popularity factor in mind and its number two position, Tully’s coffee filed for bankruptcy protection and closed many of its shops due to rising costs and lack of customers due to the “big brand name”. The CEO of Tully’s told customers they’d continue to operate despite the great recession, and reopened Tully’s a year later. “The ‘idea of Seattle’ was, and is, an idea of urban livability that lives in the DNA of every upscale coffee retailer, whether they think of it that way and acknowledge it or not”, said James Lyons, an English senior lecturer at University of Exeter in England and author of “Selling Seattle”. That’s the explanation why the best coffee, Starbucks, started in Seattle. Some people, however, view these ‘brand name’ coffee shops like Tully’s, and Starbucks as a threat or negative in some way. Shari Rainlyn thinks otherwise saying how without these big names, her small coffee shop wouldn’t be existent today. We should be thankful for the popularity gained by Starbucks globally and Tully’s on the West Coast because they helped other smaller shops come into business as well.