Starbucks Frappuccino Sales Tell a Troubling Tale | Hacker News Reader

Starbucks Frappuccino Sales Tell a Troubling Tale

bloomberg.com

23 pointssmacktoward86 comments

Somewhat related, but I always wonder if things like this are symptomatic of something larger happening - i.e. I wonder if we're at the start of a recession of some kind, and this is a symptom of that.

Of course the more logical part of my brain says "Starbucks is over-saturated, local coffee shops have surpassed Starbucks in many ways, and people are starting to realize how horrible frappuccinos are for them."

Still, sometimes it's hard to shake this nagging feeling that things like this are dead canaries. I'm not quite sure why, though.

anecdotal, but i stopped having them after they were required to put calories on the menu. That and i got common sense and started making my own coffee rather than spending ~$5 per coffee everyday.

You can use the ap to order in advanced if that's available in your region

if you don't have any particular attachment to the romance of drinking coffee, a month of caffeine tablets will run you about $5 (or less)

Coffee tastes good :)

i do like the taste of coffee

If you do have a particular attachment to the taste of coffee, consider a Keurig ($120-$250) with a reusable filter. Each cup of coffee uses ~1/3 oz of ground coffee, so a 12oz bag ($6-21) gives ~33 cups.

With expensive coffee, and an expensive machine, at 10 cups per day, after 100 days (1000 cups), that's $886.36, or $8.86 per day. If you find a cheap machine and good, inexpensive coffee, you're looking at $301.82 or $3.02 per day.

Add in $13/300 paper filters for easy and compostable cleaning, and you're looking at $3.45 - $9.29 per day, depending on your coffee price. And 32oz of vinegar for the descaling ($4) for another 1000 cups, increases to $3.47 - $9.30 per day.

As a bonus, if you're also a Futurama fan, you will experience time at an unusual rate once every 10 days.

How about a nice French press (thermos-style, stays hot for a bit), a grinder and some beans?

I make a batch at a time (roughly 1 litre), call it a couple full coffee cups, without having to wank about with a bunch of tiny per-cup efforts that add up to being a pain in the ass overall. Coffee grounds can go in my compost, or feed the next batch of oyster mushroom spawn. Mmmmm.

How long does a 12oz bag of coffee last you?

28 year old here. I was buying starbucks 5 days a week and started drinking the office coffee back in january. I haven't spent a dime on starbucks ever since.

I realized at some point I want to buy a home and also retire. Tightened the belt a bit, wrote out a strict budget, and now i am adhering to it.

Also, the crazy stock market prices are making me fearful. I still have my 401k and sp500 fund contribution each month, but I sold individual stock I was holding (mostly just faang's)... some of it is now in a cash savings account, in cd's, and a bit in just some vanguard mutual funds.

Typing on phone, sorry for typos.

Unless you have insider information or are a very good part time quant, I don't see any reason to think you can time the market.

If GP had stock mostly in tech it doesn't seem like a bad idea to diversify.

It isn't necessarily "timing the market" to cash out gains after a historic, decade-long run. You don't have to get the top or the bottom exactly right.

I would classify cashing out as timing the market. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to sell at current prices, but who knows if we'll have another +25% year or a -25% year? My point is there's no reason to be fearful, just realize that it's all a gamble unless you have an edge.

"I would classify cashing out as timing the market."

Yes that was already clear.

"who knows if we'll have another +25% year or a -25% year? My point is there's no reason to be fearful, just realize that it's all a gamble unless you have an edge."

The point is, there's a lot more that you don't know. Maybe they just sold out at a big gain, knowing that the economic cycle is a real phenomenon, that interest rates are going up, and the yield curve just inverted. Maybe they were over-weighted in a single sub-sub-sector (FAANG tech stocks) that have had a spectacular run, and it's actually a good idea to diversify. Maybe they have plans for that money in a few years, and the recent sideways movement in the market is a good excuse to take gains. Horses for courses.

Even if you don't believe any of that, it isn't "market timing" to act on hypotheses, any more than it's market timing to sell a particular stock when the fundamentals change. You have no idea what the parent's situation or risk tolerance is, so criticizing with "don't time the market" is equivalent to "never sell", which is a comment with zero information content.

I remember late in 1999 I overheard a guy talking to his friends about how he just quit his job to become a daytrader.

I saw a note on Quorum yesterday saying pretty much the same thing.

Makes me think.

Euhm. Of course there's the factor that there's "timing the market" and there's realizing the current expansion has been going on 9+ years (average = 8) and just not caring you get the top wrong by ~1 year.

Timing the market is arbitrarily hard or easy depending on the time ranges involved. Saying that there'll be a recession somewhere in the next 2 years or so is almost a certainty. If you want to get it right to the day ... big problem. Month ... still serious problem. Right give or take half a year ... probably doable with enough research (though I think you'd conclude that it'll happen around the beginning of 2019, not quite now).

To be fair, 3 dollars on coffee 3 to 5 days a week is probably not eating in to your budget very much. But I guess we all focus on different things.

Starbucks is the giant profit machine it is because of the high percentage of customers who don't order a $3 coffee. Their lifeblood is the venti soy, extra whipped cream, Chai flavor shot, double expresso Frappuccino. The article specifically calls out the drop in this high-ticket-price items decline as worrisome.

$450 per year is a new phone, or a return flight to somewhere for a weekend break. Or a coffee machine. And that's just the lower end of potential outlay.

When i was at school in the 80s one of the mandatory classes we loathed was Home Economics. However many of its lessons have been fundamental to my life since. One example being to consider the cumulative cost of small daily expenditures.

450 dollars. Is 450 dollars a lot of money to you? Yes, those are all other ways to spend 450 dollars. In my opinion, getting a coffee is a quality of life boost. It takes no effort, and it increases my productivity and happiness. We are talking about 450 dollars in a year. I spend much more money on my dog and she is much less of a guarantee of return on happiness...

But, I do agree. Some people may not be able to afford 450 dollars of discretionary spending in a year. But they likely would just spend it on something else, and the yearly cost of coffee is definitely not near the cost of alcohol for anyone who drinks. It's really not something to worry about.

You're on the right track. Keep on, you'll build the future you want.

Of course the more logical part of my brain says "Foobar Flappers Inc is over-saturated, local flapper shops have surpassed FooBar in many ways, and people are starting to realize how horrible FooBar flappers are for them."

This applies to a lot of things. It's a broad trend, and I hope it sinks in rather than passes as a fad.

> Starbucks is over-saturated, local coffee shops have surpassed Starbucks in many ways, and people are starting to realize how horrible frappuccinos are for them."

isn't this true for other industries like beer and fast food though?

Mostly, yes. But market saturation isn't a hard cap on sales.

I owned a few fast food restaurants. To gain sales you either added new customers (the market saturation cap), increase order frequency or increase order size. Obvious, but the counter-intuitive part is adding customers is orders of magnitude more expensive. That's why loyalty programs, rewards, "Stars" are so prevelant; as are all the little snacks you walk by on your way to order your $1.99 black coffee - Starbucks needs you to pick up that organic, gluten-free rice krispies treat.

The eating out/burger/coffee spending pie is only so big in number of customers, so to increase your revenue you try to steal customers from other businesses and reduce the time between visits and increase the amount spent per visit.

"Only at Starbucks - Nitro cold brew", "117 stars to your next free beverage" and conveniently placed chocolate covered expresso beans are specifically targeted to these issues.

Not a recession, not in this economy. It’s too strong right now, give it another 2 years maybe.

I believe in such signals. Starbucks, to everyone, is discretionary spending: pricey, single-use consumables. In the US, the stores are someplace you can sit and spend time, like a Panera, but plenty of people get their drinks to go. It'd be worth comparing drive-thru and take-out traffic with eat-in traffic at Starbucks to see if a particular category of orders is declining more.

Discretionary spending on consumables is the first thing that most people cut back when they're trying to save money. People have a fixed amount of income, and they try to allocate that to necessities first. A reduction of spending in discretionary consumables may be an indicator that people perceive their cost of living to be rising.

How about improving on some of the food items? Starbucks had purchased BayBread/La Boulange for 100 million several years ago. Yet when I walk into a Starbucks and look at the selection of pastries behind the glass casing, they look dehydrated and unappealing. My local cafe has stuff that actually looks like it was freshly baked that morning. They usually don't make them in house, they work with local bakers. Starbucks should consider doing something similar.

why not support your local cafe instead?

(in terms of the purely economic question of whats best for sb, that mass produced cardboard food must net more profit than the increased sales of more expensive higher quality food would)

The percentage of that profit staying in the local area is smaller at a Starbucks.

One is overrun with mannerless 18-25 year olds, so much so that they replaced the chairs with uncomfortable ones in an apperant attempt to limit them hanging out all day.

The founder of the other was just put away for child sex crimes. True story.

I've encountered two Starbucks stores that I consider exemplarily managed. I go there mostly.

I agree they tend to look awful in the display case, but I've actually been fairly happy with their bakery items. It's possible all they really need to do is spritz the muffins with water every so often to make them appear more moist.

The best way to sell baked goods is to bake them in-house, though, exposing customers to an aroma that's almost impossible to say "no" to. Subway clearly had the right idea when it came to selling cookies.

One issue with that is that less-industrialized processes are more prone to errors, particularly in food safety. Such a failure at a single store can tarnish the entire brand. Just ask Chipotle.

They bought La Boulange to shut down the competition because they were typically started around the block from Starbucks. But SB kept them long enough the non-compete ran out. The founder then re-leased several of the old locations and opened as La Boulangerie...

I guess that's what SB can do when they print money and don't want to be distracted by baking.

Aside from wasting money, that amount of excess sugar also kills you similarly to alcohol. Diabetes, fatty liver disease, obesity, etc. Well I guess it's also wasting money due to the increased health care costs but one might also argue an early death saves money so YMMV.

I've never understood why they don't offer all the same sweet drinks, but with something like Splenda instead of sugar.

Perhaps it's better this way, otherwise I'd probably be at Starbucks a lot more often.

Oddly enough, the zero-calorie (or very low calorie) sweeteners are almost as fattening as sugar.

It is interesting that soda (i.e. Coke, Pepsi) sales took a huge hit over the past decade as people became more health conscious and looked for healthier options, and yet people will still consume 2-4 times that many calories and sugars in a sweetened coffee drink.

Funny that decreasing growth is the main cause for concern in this article. Talk about ubiquity itself not being enough for investors.

The need for growth eventually kills all these companies. There’s just no concept on Wall St. that a company can so completely saturate the market that there’s nowhere else to go. It’s a relatively new concept that companies really can dominate the whole world in their market segment.

> There’s just no concept on Wall St. that a company can so completely saturate the market that there’s nowhere else to go

They’re called utilities. They pay a nice dividend and are valued with at a sober multiple.

Maybe folks are realizing that even when you call basically-a-milkshake a coffee beverage, it's still basically a milkshake... and not something you should consume regularly.

not likely. obesity in the US is still a thing, and it's not getting any better.

Starbucks is the defacto mascot of money wasting. People always talk about abstaining from starbucks when they talk about saving money. The frappuccino is often the specific product that is mentioned. How is it any surprise that it's popularity has waned? Star bucks stores feel more like McDonald's stores than anything else, there is almost no atmosphere to speak of which I would guess is rather important to the coffee snobs who buy fraps. What kind of world do we live in when McDonald's is expensive (everything besides the simple cheeseburger is a total insult to value) and when Starbucks is McDonald's?

>Starbucks is the defacto mascot of money wasting.

>People always talk about abstaining from starbucks when they talk about saving money.

Except when they come and buy them :)

For the money wasting culture.... The latest Starbuckses in China are mindblowing... Not only they have nearly $11 bucks drinks ( you can buy 4 full meals for that price in China ) the decorum looks like something out of ritz carlton if not more posh.

They are thriving here.

But in the article it says that Starbucks growth in China has fallen significantly behind market growth

Starbucks stores when initially designed, where intended to fill the need for a "third space" outside of home and work. Not everyone wanted to hangout at a bar. And not every city and town had such spaces. Which is why Starbucks worked. People paid for that space not really for the coffee.

Funny you mention McDonalds, because that's where I buy my fraps now instead of Starbucks. They taste exactly the same but are significantly cheaper.

> Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a shock, given that Frappuccinos pack a lot of calories and customers are increasingly looking for healthy choices. But Starbucks needs some new hits to give people a reason to come back through its doors, especially with so many insurgent and boutique coffeehouses chasing the same customers.

Indeed, at over 500 calories, any given Frappuccino is almost 1/3 of my daily calorie budget. That's a lot to spend for a single treat. They keep trying to push these at the "Happy Hour" events they hold every other Thursday - announced by Wifi auto-login page, auto-signup email newsletter, and numerous app notifications. They're using just about every trick available, but sadly their caffeinated milkshakes aren't bringing paying customers to their 'yard'.

As a frequent Starbucks customer, I face 3 issues with the stores:

- Lack of low-carb, high-protein meal options. The protein boxes are acceptable, and more options would be lovely.

- Long lines to order, and an uncomfortable wait for the drink. The solution I've found for this is to order through the app, from a store about 5 minutes away. By the time I arrive, my order is waiting for me at the end of the drink rail.

- Unpredictable lack of seating - no way to know if all tables are taken at a given store, without actually being there in person. Google Maps can give some idea. Not sure of a better solution for this, short of table sensors or webcams.

The long ordering times are a problem held by almost all coffee shops, and Starbucks app is the only thing that makes me opt for them over smaller local competition.

  Lack of low-carb, high-protein meal options

The sous-vide egg bites are the perfect keto snack. The steak and egg tomatillo works, too.

What else do you eat? Avoiding any and all sugar does seem like a great way to lose weight, but how do you go about your day? Is it lots of cooking, lots of batch cooking, or getting things at cafés?

I was telling a friend of mine the other day how I used to cook a lot of beef and assorted vegetables in a pot of water and it would last me the week, but I have barely any sense of taste.

I generally don't cook, except for a occasional grilling.

There are always low-carb modifications you can make. There used to be coffee shops here that would make a larger omelette in lieu of potatoes and toast, for example. In and Out Burger offers the so-called protein style for all of their burgers such that you can get your burger in lettuce wrap instead of a bun. Even at McDonald's, a good low carb value is to get 2 double cheeseburgers or McDoubles, toss one bun, and use the remaining bun has a holder for the combined now four-patty Burger (you don't have to hit the button, just use it as a holder). etc.

Meat. Cheese (in moderation). Eggs. Salad greens. It's What's For Dinner (tm).

> Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a shock, given that Frappuccinos pack a lot of calories and customers are increasingly looking for healthy choices.

Glad that people are making healthier choices but consuming stimulants and refined sugar every day (sometimes multiple times per day) probably isn't a healthy habit either.

I stopped going to starbucks because I had to wait in the same like as the "large mocha frappuccino with whipped cream and low fat milk please" folks who took forever and a day to order their crap, when all I wanted was a black coffee.

Why can't there be a way to get a regular, no frills coffee without waiting for tens of minutes?

Use the mobile app. Works beautifully and 99% of the time my order is there when I arrive. I've even used it after I arrived and there was a long line, they make it almost immediately. One time I showed up and it wasn't ready because there was a group of 15 ordering frappucinos but one of the baristas looked me staring and then went "Mobile order?" and I said "Yeah" and then they made my drink immediately.

Problem with that is that there is no real-time inventory checking from mobile app orders against What that particular store actually has in stock at that time. I see several cases a day where people have ordered an item off the app that this particular store doesn't actually have. Not all stores have the full menu. The app doesn't account for that.

I only ordered from the app when Starbucks is running a promo for discounts or bonus stars for items purchased through the app. And I only have the app on an alternate device that has no other data.

> Why can't there be a way to get a regular, no frills coffee without waiting for tens of minutes?

Make it at home with an aeropress, I stopped going to Starbucks when I realized I was spending $5 on venti iced coffees multiple times per week when $10 worth of beans easily lasts me two weeks of a daily pot (2x venti) of coffee. One pot of coffee with breakfast usually keeps me going for the day, with the free side effect of not having trouble going to sleep at a decent hour

Aeropress has been great for me in addition to paying attention to the quality of beans Im buying now. Id reccomend one as well

Yea, sometimes that's not an option when traveling.. When I'm not traveling, I make all of my coffee at home, or drink whatever my employer serves.

I bring caffeine pills with me now when I travel so I don't have to go out for my daily coffee. But I enjoy brewing my own coffee at home.

> Why can't there be a way to get a regular, no frills coffee without waiting for tens of minutes?

McDonald's has acceptable black coffee if that's what you're looking for, and usually less hassle than Starbucks. I can't really say anything either way about the taste - to me coffee is coffee.

Acceptable? I would take a black cup of their coffee over Starbucks every day of the week.

> when all I wanted was a black coffee.

This is incorrect at least at all the Starbucks I've been to in the past 5 years (ATL, LAX, San Diego, bay area). If you order just drip coffee, the cashier just fills it for you whilst billing. No waiting in line with the other folks who have different tastes from yours.

Also I agree with my sibling commenter; if all you need is black coffee McD is much better. But you might have to wait in line with "big mac and fries" folks to order their crap.

Anecdotally, it really depends on the Starbucks. There are plenty that do not fill it for you right away. IME, if it's hot coffee usually they will. Iced coffee, they won't.

> Why can't there be a way to get a regular, no frills coffee without waiting for tens of minutes?

McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, and hell, even Starbucks offers that if you order ahead with their app and just pick it up when you get there.

This gets me every time I go. It staggers me the time spent per cup.

My wife gets a venti soy frappa latte double expresso flavor shot monstrosity and I just want a coffee.

My rebeliousness makes me order in a certain way, refusing to speak in Starbucks-ese: "Large Black Coffee, please"

>...Starbucks struggled to draw customers in the afternoons.

My local Starbucks stops brewing decaf at 11am. I can't drink caffeine in the afternoon and I don't think I am alone.

Most of the locations near me close up fairly early in the afternoon, so those of us who can drink caffeine in the afternoon have no choice but to take our business elsewhere.

There is no extra charge for a pour-over (e.g. for decaf or dark roast).

If they try to upsell you to a Clover specialty variety for more money, don't pay any upcharge.

The Starbucks sugared drinks are so sweet my teeth hurt. One day, I ordered a black coffee, it arrived pre-sweetened when I was expecting bitter. Starbucks had spit up on their floors after that drink.

Edit: Also, at one point I did a deep dive into my finances, and I realized I was spending more at Starbucks than I was on groceries at a grocery store. I ate out a lot. Started cooking home more, and made a rule about how much weekly to spend on coffee. That probably didn't help Starbucks' finances multiplied by all the financially squeezed millennials.

I'm guilty of contributing to the decline of Frappuccino sales. I used to drink them regularly at Starbucks. Two (related) things happened: I got off the street and I got healthier.

I use food in place of drugs. Me consuming enormous amounts of coffee for the caffeine is a sign of health distress. I have mostly quit drinking coffee since leaving California and getting back into housing.

I was also going to Starbucks for the Wi-Fi. I now have internet service at home.

It's anecdata. But maybe there are trends happening that are impacting Starbucks, but which are not really about Starbucks per se, and that don't say something dire about the world.

Does anyone recall how Facebook's booming growth coincided with the growth of Zynga? A game genre which asked you to have a bunch of friends to get ahead, otherwise pay to win. (aka. a lot of people signed up for fake accounts)

The recent US employment numbers have a similar stink, as it's impossible for the vast majority of people to survive off a single job's income, especially when little to none of them are offering full-time or benefits. The talk of a recession hasn't started, but it's here, if not something far far worse.

> it's impossible for the vast majority of people to survive off a single job's income

The average employed American earned $928.74 a week in May of 2018 [1]. That's over $46,000 a year [2]. That's a livable wage. In the same month, labor force participation for Americans over 16 was 62.7% [3].

So a majority of Americans have jobs, and the average job pays over twice the poverty rate for a family of three to four [4]. The vast majority of Americans can survive off a single job's income.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm

[2] 928.74 * (52 - 2) includes 2 weeks' vacation

[3] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#R...

Thanks for the data. I know very few people who legitimately have more than one job and I grew up in a poor household. We got by.

You're talking about 10-30 years ago. Not today.

That's fair to say. A bit of a logical oversight on my end :)

How many people do you know who work in the service industry?

I think something better than Dunkin Donuts, but cheaper than Starbucks could make a killing.

People like their coffee but not quite the price.

Also - the brand is fully commoditized ... so high price points are harder to achieve.

Where's the kombucha? And maybe some avocado toast with flavoured salt? The zeitgeist is passing them by...

Vote me down all you want, but I fail to see why this is relevant to HN and landed the first page...

Don't mention being down voted. It's against the rules and not very appealing. But I do agree with your sentiment

Why did you feel the need to create a new account for this comment & thread?

I pressed logout by accident and I didn't know the password

Oh, come on. You know everyone on this site is a fucking asshole.

True, but I didn't think IP was saying anything particularly controversial. Hence my curiosity!

I was almost wondering if OP just created new accounts for every thread out of some hyper-privacy orientation.

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