Does Starbucks Stand a Chance in Italy?

Yes

Starbucks's green signage is already ubiquitous in almost every city in the world so it came as a bit of a shock when the coffee mega-chain announced its move into Italy, a country that holds a central place in the chain’s origin story, earlier this week. The American company, which has more than 23,000 stores across the globe, will soon open one shop in Milan early next year.

Starbucks, which was founded in 1971, has apparently stayed clear of Italy because of the country's strong coffee culture. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said the move would be made with "great humility and respect" for Italian coffee culture; he even said that Starbucks owed its existence to it. Schultz then repeated the story of discovering the Starbucks model of serving coffee while walking the streets of Milan and Verona in the early 1980s.

Schultz's translation of Italian cafes is like the Venetian casino’s take on a Renaissance city.

Left unsaid was the fact that Italy is the world’s eighth largest economy and, by some measures, Starbucks's most valuable cafe market yet. Breaking into that market is significantly different than opening a location in a country like China, which had virtually no coffee culture before Starbucks arrived. So how will Starbucks try to sell a now globally recognized coffee store experience to the Milanese, who have a strong culture centered around coffee?

Italians know coffee and have an established relationship to cafes. "The whole transaction is brief, social, and affordable, rarely costing more than €1.00," says Katie Parla, a reporter based in Rome (and Eater contributor), of the process of ordering a coffee. Italians buy an espresso (or a grappa or glass of wine or juice), drink it quickly at the bar and leave. Except at a few palatial cafes in grand cities, seating is limited; there are no plush lounge chairs or wireless charging stations at coffee bars in Rome or Florence. Menu boards, when they exist, are small. While Schultz was inspired by Italian cafes, his translation of them is more or less the same as the Venetian casino’s take on a Renaissance city.

However, to say that Italians are outraged at the news is hyperbole at best. Wired's headline, "Italians compare arrival of Starbucks to the Apocalypse" was pulled from the account of a Twitter user with 21 followers. Parla notes, "while there might be an 'Italian' coffee culture, there isn't an 'Italian' mentality." She elaborates, "Casting a population of diverse means and experiences as having a universal opinion on Starbucks is simplistic. Some people are outraged, others intrigued, others indifferent, and so on."

"They’re not going to try and mimic the Italian experience."

Jake Leonti, a coffee consultant based in New York City who has worked with Italian espresso companies Filicori Zecchini and Caffè Moak, sees Schultz's talk of honor and respect as simply good manners. "They’re not going to try and mimic the Italian experience," he said. "When they set out, they tried to bring the Milan experience to America. Now they want to bring the Starbucks brand to Italy."

It's the cultural differences that Starbucks is focused on in its messaging to the press. While Italian coffee culture is vaguely familiar to coffee drinkers around the globe, Starbucks's culture is actually very well-known to most of the developed world. Leonti doesn’t expect Starbucks to follow a strict interpretation of Italian espresso, or for that to be the draw, especially for young, cosmopolitan Milanese. "It’s about the experience rather than the taste. The classic Italian cafe experience feels like what their grandfather did. It’s old, it’s boring," he said. "[At Starbucks] they get to have different products and they may even get to speak English, like how we get to speak Italian when we go to Starbucks."

That said, Starbucks’s most radical contribution to most new markets, to-go coffee, is rare in Italy. "Most cafes aren’t even equipped with proper to-go cups, but will sell coffee to take away in flimsy plastic cups," notes Parla. "Often offices will order coffee delivery from a bar and the server will just use the standard porcelain cups and deliver it all to the office and pick up the used cups with the next delivery."

For all its Italian trappings, Starbucks has little to do with Italian coffee. Despite what some may think, Frappuccino is not an Italian word and a latte in Italy is a coffee with milk, but without foam. Even an Italian espresso and a Starbucks espresso share little more than a name. According to the National Institute of Italian Espresso, a shot of espresso is around 29 milliliters including crema; at Starbucks, every shot is a double shot by default. Starbucks does not even list the nutritional information for a single shot of espresso on its website. This is true at other American cafes and at third-wave shops like Stumptown as well.

Starbucks espresso in Italy may be totally different from those everywhere else.

Some say Italian espresso shots taste more bitter or earthier, with few of the bright, fruity flavors found in shots poured at finer coffee shops in the U.S. Starbucks didn’t announce a menu or special Italy-only drinks, though the coffee giant did say it would offer a special blend in the new cafe in Milan, so maybe a Starbucks espresso in Italy will be fundamentally different from those everywhere else. In the announcement, Schultz noted that the first cafe in Milan would have a bar and that espressos would cost about the same as those at neighborhood shops. That’s all the company has announced about the look of the cafe, though a spokesperson did note, "It will be designed with deep respect for the people of Italy and their appreciation of the art of coffee."

Every American food chain that has expanded into Italy (or France for that matter) has done a lot of handwringing, at least publicly, over how its designers, culinary team, and marketing managers plan to approach a country with such a proud, established food culture. The response has almost always been profitable. While it’s true that the first Italian McDonald’s store, in Rome, inspired the Slow Food movement, the biggest threat to that store's business when it opened in 1986 was the dangerous crush of customers clamoring for a burger. There are now more than 500 McDonald’s stores in Italy. Starbucks has partnered with Percassi, an Italian retail and real estate company that owns franchises of Nike, Victoria Secret, and Lego. Ultimately, this isn’t simply a new cafe opening. It’s a global brand finally arriving on a new, if slightly familiar, shore.

Meanwhile, Starbucks plans to open 500 more cafes in China this year, hitting 3,400 there by 2019.

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