I note that Australia was the only market for which Starbucks had to change its roast - which among friends who drink coffee moved it from “godawful” to merely “incredibly bad”, but it’s still more than twice the price of the coffee shop next door, offering poorer coffee.
Devilsknew, there are cafes that offer a cooked breakfast, but most people have either toast or cereal.
I’ll also point out that most american chain restaurants’ strategies fall into one of two categories:
Go hard or go home: practiced by Hooters, Tony Roma’s, Planet Hollywood, the Hard Rock Cafe - open a single restaurant as a test for a wider rollout. Find out that the business never really takes off the way that you expect it to, then close it after a few years when it’s not paying its way.
Go hard then go home: practiced by Starbucks, Sizzler, Boston Market - open a huge chain at once or expand quickly, find out that people don’t like your stuff, then contract drastically, often over a period of years. Some places might stick around in certain areas (I think there are three Sizzlers open on the far outer fringes of the greater Sydney metro area, I believe there are still two Starbucks in Sydney city) where there’s a niche clientele.
America seems to have an affinity to chains that is unique. Nowhere else I’ve been in the world is there a love of chains that spans everything from the ultra low end all the way up to high end steakhouses. It’s not Australia that’s unique for not having a Denny’s equivalent, it’s the US that’s unique for having so many casual fine dining chains.
I’ll also point out that part of Starbucks’ epic failness was their preconception that Australians wanted to spend time drinking coffee in a place that felt like an outpost of a corporate chain. They were stunned to discover that next to none of their customers stayed to have their drinks. If people wanted somewhere to sit and read/talk/work on their laptop/masturbate in the bathrom/whatever, they’d find a cafe that was more welcoming. If they just felt like a coffee, they’d get a better one much more cheaply next door.
Seriously, how expensive is just a regular cup of Pike’s Peak Roast or whatever is the standard house coffee – not a foo-foo drink that takes a minute to order – at a Starbucks in Australia? In ever city I’ve lived in, prices at Starbucks was comparable with those of independent coffeehouses and small local chains. I’ve yet to see the mythical “$5 cup of coffee” that’s just coffee at Starbucks, much less any coffee house or donut shop.
Sometimes a cup of coffee is cheaper at a diner or restaurant. However, in the US people generally don’t go to restaurants just to have a cup of coffee, and if they do, it’s at a place with a counter, like a Denny’s or a traditional diner. Maybe in Australia it’s different.
A large capuccino from a coffee shop in the middle of Sydney is typically $3. Sometimes $3.20, occasionally up to $3.40. Some places have street windows, others require you to come into the cafe to buy your takeaway.
Starbucks charges over $6 for the same drink.
Australians don’t typically drink plunger coffee away from home, and the only place that I know that you can get filter coffee is at McDonald’s.
Please note that the Australians who are talking about the cost of coffee in Starbucks and other coffee shops are giving the prices in Australian dollars, so before you decide how high the prices are, consider the conversion rate. Also, the way that Starbucks expanded in the U.S. was also quite fast. They have a habit of grabbing any location that looks halfway promising and immediately opening a shop. This means that, unlike some other chains, they’ve done a fair amount of closing shops that didn’t pan out. Apparently they did the same thing on an even faster scale in Australia, but by the time they figured out that they were doing something wrong, they’d lost too much money and just gave up.
They haven’t given up entirely - according to the White Pages there are 10 left in Sydney (a city of a shade over 4.5 million), typically in touristy areas, although a few of those seem to have the smell of death about them. I understand that the remaining stores are running at a net loss, however, and they may pull out of the country by the end of the year.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I wouldn’t call cappuccino plain coffee. Right now, I’m sitting in a booth at one location of a local coffeehouse chain, and the price of a large cappuccino, considered a “specialty drink” on the menu hanging on the wall, is US$3.49, or AU$3.78. A large regular coffee of the same size – I think you’d call it “filter coffee” – is US$1.56, or AU$1.69. Hot tea and hot chocolate are priced the same as regular coffee.
You mentioned street windows and takeaway. While coffeehouses in the US serve takeout customers, most have quite a bit of indoor seating. (Exceptions: some freestanding suburban Starbucks stores built expressly for drive-through customers, with a few token tables; and the occasional independent coffee shop operating out of an old Fotomat booth or something similar.) In the US, coffeehouses are increasingly popular hangouts and meeting areas for those from a wide cross-section of society. Do Australians generally crab a cup of coffee and go, or do they linger in neighborhood coffeehouses as in the US? (Right now, it’s 10:30 PM where I am, and the coffeehouse I’m sitting in, in a pedestrian-oriented village in an Adelaide-sized metro area, is quite busy.)
Today, US$1.00 is the equivalent of AU$1.08. They’re almost at par.
The capuccino counts as a “standard coffee”. The same price would apply to a short black, long black, flat white, macchiato, latte or what have you - and a tea or an hot chocolate would be the same price.
To a point, but a cafe is usually somewhere that you’d meet someone for a light lunch or an afternoon tea, or that you’d grab some dessert after a show. Potentially you’d use it to meet a business contact.
It’s not really an ‘hangout’ thing per se - you’d be more likely to do that sort of thing in a pub. If you want to sit in there and read, chat or work on a laptop they’d typically tolerate it as long as they’re not busy, but if the place is chockers, you’d be likely to be getting the move-on evil eye the way that you would in a restaurant.
They’re also not necessarily for a “wide section” of society. Blue-collar males wouldn’t typically eat at a cafe, although you’ll see them lining up for take-away coffees of a morning.
IIRC a filtered coffee from Starbucks is about AUD$2.80 or so and it’s really not very nice.
Their cappuccinos and other drinks aren’t too bad, but they’re still way overpriced, take way too long to make, and there’s way too much “We Love The Planet!” stuff in their stores.
Australians want a cup of coffee. If they want to donate to worthy causes they’ll give to the Salvation Army or The Smith Family or the Red Cross or something. And if they want somewhere to surf the net on their laptop they’ll either do it at work or at uni or at home. They don’t really want to do it in a cafe in the middle of town.
BigNik, there’s still a Hard Rock Cafe in Surfer’s Paradise (and not a bad place to eat IMHO, but rather pricey) and it’s always been packed on the occasions I’ve been there. I’m surprised they haven’t put one in Cairns or Melbourne, to be honest.
I went past the one at Circular Quay at lunch and couldn’t see it on their board. I’ll check it again on my way home.
I knew that they closed Sydney and Melbourne together a few years back - I assumed that all of them went at the same time. According to the website I just looked at, they had one in Enzed, too - and they closed the restaurant a year and an half before they closed the shop. Have to love that they’ve got that much faith in their ‘souvenirs’.
It’s usually right at the very bottom of the menu in smaller print, IIRC. Perhaps in the hopes you won’t notice and will order the $5 Cappuccino instead.
The same was true of Planet Hollywood, I believe- they closed the restaurant in Auckland but kept the souvenir shop open for some time afterwards. They never even got around to opening the Planet Hollywood restaurant on the Gold Coast as far as I know, but there was definitely a souvenir shop in the tourist part of Surfers for a while about 10 years ago.
It’s because Aussies are the most gullible stock. They will believe the craziest shit in the world and have imported and burdened their bullshit on the sane world and caused a rift in the American Politicial System… If I were a McCarthy, I would declare war against Fox and News Corp. tomorrow, and occupy Sydney by Friday.
But those aren’t “standard coffees”- those are espresso drinks. Standard coffee is drip, filter, or percolator.
Washingtonian nitpick time: I think you mean Pike Place, not Pike’s Peak. Starbucks started as a tea, coffee, and spice shop at Pike Place Market, then shifted into a coffeehouse role, so one of their main roasts is the “Pike Place.”
Don’t you see?
… you have to hate the American ideal to make your own ideal.
Scrub it. Make an Australian Supper at a reasonable price… then serve it after hours. Fuck the Americans.
But here, espresso drinks are the standard - as in, what people buy. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen filter coffee for sale in this coutry - maybe at a food court? Generally if a place isn’t going to spend the effort to make a good cup of coffee, they just won’t serve coffee at all.
I think I understand your point… that just because something works in the US doesn’t mean it will work elsewhere, right? That’s a fair point and one I don’t think many people are arguing with.
What’s interesting is why the entire diner-style eatery (24 hours or otherwise) just doesn’t exist here. I mean, on paper all the ingredients are there (excuse the pun): Westernised culture, likes similar food to the US, lots of people working odd hours and driving a lot, fond of coffee, socialising, etc.
Yet every attempt to get a Denny’s style eatery going here has failed spectacularly, and even “chain” restaurants like Sizzler (ironically, the Australian side of the business now owns the US one) and Lone Star Steakhouse rarely manage more than perhaps half a dozen to a dozen locations throughout the entire country- The Hog’s Breath Cafe has managed around 70 locations and are probably the major exeption, but they’re still more upmarket and expensive than somewhere like Denny’s or IHOP.
It’s an odd situation, at any rate, and one that bears further interest, I think.
The only places I’ve ever found here doing decent filter coffee are McDonalds (now phasing it out in favour of the IMHO not very nice Rainforest Alliance blend cafe style stuff) and Starbucks, most of which have closed down and which wasn’t great either.
But yeah, generally places here either do coffee properly or don’t bother, with the exception of food court places- I’ve come across a few of those with some sort of coffee dispensing machine that dispenses something that’s… not very much like decent coffee, IMHO.
I think that Sizzlers have about 18 locations open in Queensland but the operation there is owned by the same guy that owns the franchise for KFC in Qld. It would be interesting to see how they are faring because I know that they had 26 sites a few years ago.
As far as I know they’re doing alright- they’re always really busy whenever I’ve been to them and Sizzler’s Global Head Office is in Brisbane. There was that poisoning scare a few years back which I think they used as an excuse to close a few of the less profitable stores and re-brand themselves; including a conspicuous mention of being 100% Australian in their ads.
