Indian Starbucks

Want to meet your friends or celebrate a birthday or date a date or just do time pass or meet up your client or your customer or waiting to catch up with someone or meet a matrimonial mate or bla bla- one place, different uses.

India is being applauded to have finally arrived in the Coffee mug, the retail chain way.

Yes, I am talking about the mushrooming of the coffee chains (you may also call it, CCD or Café Coffee Day) in almost every part of your city- colleges, residential colonies, airport lounges, highways, shopping streets, shopping malls, official complexes, multiplexes, petrol stations, hospitals and I am sure to have missed something in this list.

CCD opened its first store at the up market, Brigade Road, Bangalore in 1996. Today, it boasts of 639 cafes across 98 cities, with a flagship and ambitious store opened in Vienna. The second player of significant presence is Barista, with 100 stores and has been suffering with ownership and management switches since its inception.

Barista is clearly premium priced and positioned, when compared with CCD, but CCD brews over Barista with its shear accessibility, low pricing and single minded focus and attention from the parent organization, “Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Ltd.”, which has the second largest coffee farms in Asia.

I have been a regular visitor of the coffee shops ever since they started their espresso. And, though these cafes have been constantly praised for their service and giving that “cuppa” experience to the Tea addicts of India, I seriously have few problems with their basic services.

Some of the commonly noticed ones are as follows:
1. Slow response times, as soon as you enter their café, even serving of water and
wiping off the tables take up a considerable time.
2. Generally, the wiping cleans the tangible remains on your table but leaves you
some sick smell, similar to that of a stale wiping cloth. And it sucks.
3. Humble and polite customers are sure to get a punch in the quality of service if
they reach their at peak times. The more dominating and bossy the customer is,
the better is the expected service.
4. Stewards or the coffee boys are not well verse with the mannerisms, language
and customer handling, though some exceptions are always there.
5. In services, one of the key delivery issues is the consistency of the quality and
experience. This is a real issue with all the cafes and depends a lot on the time
of your visit, sipper’s population, staff availability and café location. Some
cafes are always serving good and some are always serving shit.

Right now, it seems that CCD is entirely focusing on scoring big in the numbers game and as it’s the only dominant player (Barista can not be considered a competition), it scores big on other parameters as well.

Country of the size of India and demographics even more diverse can clearly support at least 2-3 players, each catering to a sizeable, sustainable, profitable and scalable niche.

I am waiting for a few challenger brands in the café space, which can deliver some unique experience, creamed up with better quality of service and most importantly CONSISTENCY.

Why to wait for Starbucks to do all that for us, lets have our own Indian Starbucks.

A lot is stil to happen over a cuppa in India....