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In Starbucks (SBUX-0.63%)’ most recent earnings call, CEO Brian Niccol hit on the company’s “Back to Starbucks” theme, an effort to return the chain to its roots.
“Imagine coffeehouses that are comfortable and warm with expanded seating options, power outlets, and abundant food displays,” Niccol said. He went on to describe stores with better design, separating mobile ordering from the cafe experience, as well as a redesigned espresso bar that “adds a sense of theater.”
Niccol’s coffeehouse description sounds a lot like the coffee scene of his college years. He may want to start there.
Niccol graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1996. The 20,000-student Miami campus community is a bucolic bubble of leafy green quads and red brick buildings with no fewer than four Starbucks crammed into one square mile. But when Niccol was a student, there were only a handful of options, and one place in particular that reflects the vibe he’s hoping to imbue in Starbucks today — Mama Earth.
“They had the best atmosphere. It was a bit crowded – but it was a college coffee shop. They had the epitome of 90's coffee shop energy,” said Missi Malone, who was a student at Miami in the 90s and now lives in Cincinnati. Eventually, she said, Mama Earth closed, and a new place opened, but it was never the same.
“Live music might be playing on the piano. A box of well-loved board games would be stashed slightly in the back, where we would sometimes run our fingers down the cracked spines of their boxes before inevitably settling on chess,” Tiffany Williams, another former Mama Earth patron, reminisced.
“We’d find a small table and listen to the music, talk over the low rumble of the other patrons, or quietly sip our coffee while we contemplated our next move. There doesn’t feel like there is anything quite like that anymore,” she said.
Former Oxford Visitors Bureau director Jessica Greene, a 2000 Miami University graduate, also remembers Mama Earth fondly.
“The coffeehouses in Oxford back then were third places before the term third places,” Greene said.
The cosmetic changes Niccol envisions for Starbucks stores, however, are unlikely to draw true coffee connoisseurs. Changing the product it sells is a much bigger hurdle.
Serving amazing coffee on such a massive scale wouldn’t be profitable or possible, said Robert Thurston, a retired history professor who lives in Oxford and literally wrote the book on coffee – “Coffee: From Bean to Barista,” due out in paperback this month.
“If you go into Starbucks and order a cup of black coffee, they don’t make much money,” Thurston said. “The more `stuff ‘ that is added to a Starbucks cup of coffee, the larger the profit margin.”
“Above a certain size, getting high-quality beans is too difficult. Starbucks is so big that it can’t,” according to Thurston. So, instead, he said Starbucks is in the “milk drink business.”
Thurston said the challenge for Starbucks is that the lower quality the coffee they serve, the easier it is for other companies to come along and cut into their business.
“But, Starbucks will remain a huge corporation, he conceded, because “Starbucks is still what people think about when they want something a little better than Folgers (SJM-0.26%) or Maxwell House (KHC-0.09%).”
It may be that the coffee doesn’t matter as much in the end — which is why Niccol is focused on making Starbucks a “third place” again.
“In this town, people love to gather,” Greene said. “And gathering space is at a premium.”
Francisco Velasquez contributed to this report