By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
DUSSELDORF, Germany — No matter what Europeans might say, Starbucks has already conquered their continent, even before opening a single store in jumpin’-java countries such as Germany, France and Italy.
During the time it is taking Seattle-based Starbucks to get set up on the other side of the Atlantic, Starbucks copycats are springing up all over here — and doing very well.
Three years ago, U.S.-style coffee shops didn’t exist in Germany, said Hans-Georg Mueller, spokesman for the German Coffee Association. Now, there are as many as 200.
Berlin, the German capital, is starting to look like Seattle, with coffee bars popping up on every corner to offer their own versions of Starbucks-inspired drinks.
And the trend shows no sign of slowing down. Starbucks accelerated it Thursday at a press conference in Berlin by announcing plans to enter Germany. The company already has stores in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and plans to open in Austria in December.
Martin Schaefer has the bug. After a two-month stint working for a Starbucks in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, piqued his coffee interest in 1996, the 31-year-old German now is set this fall to open up his seventh Starbucks-style coffee bar in the Rhine River city of Dusseldorf. Next year he hopes to expand his Woyton Coffee to Cologne and Frankfurt.
Philippe Bloch, a Frenchman who fell in love with a coffee shop on New York’s Columbus Avenue in 1993, now has 26 Columbus Cafe stores in France and Belgium.
Both men relate similar start-up tales of wagging fingers from bankers who predicted failure and of confused customers who took their business elsewhere when they didn’t know how to behave or what to order.
Schaefer said he had to put up signs explaining to customers that the cafe was self-service. And until last year, he had to order his cups, lids, certain ingredients and blending machines from the United States because "no one in Europe understood what I needed."
Word of mouth and one-on-one education helped overcome many challenges, but the coffee shops also had to overcome cultural biases.
"Everyone said it will never work in France," Bloch said. "The French will never take coffee to go, they’ll never switch from espresso to cappuccino, they’ll never put caramel syrup in their coffee — you know, the same things they said about hamburgers 20 years ago."
The Starbucks skeptics will change their tune before long, Bloch and Schaefer say, although that doesn’t mean the warnings are completely off-key.
"It’ll be tougher (for Starbucks) in Europe than anywhere else in the world," Bloch said, "because in Japan or the Middle East there was no coffee tradition, but here there’s an ancient coffee culture."
Still, the buzz over coffee is palpable, if quite recent. After Bloch’s requests for financial support were mocked for years, five European companies offered to buy him out last year.
"Everyone was saying, wow, this huge wave is coming to us named Starbucks, and we’re not prepared for it, and we can’t let another American company dominate," Bloch said.
But that domination will be all but certain once Starbucks really gets rolling in Europe, he added.
"We’re compared to Starbucks every day in our stores," Bloch said. "Starbucks is the point of reference in the world. No one else counts in this business."
Mueller, the coffee association spokesman, said coffee shops are so popular right now that there’s room enough in the market for everyone.
"I think the competition helps the market and attracts new consumers, mostly younger," Mueller said.
Mark McKeon, the president for Starbucks Coffee in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, agrees that the competition is actually encouraging.
"We’re pleased that there is a focus on this style of coffee," McKeon said, "because it means there must be a demand."
Herald reporter Susanna Ray is in Germany on a journalism fellowship. She can be reached at ray@heraldnet.com.
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