Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

For the Love of Joe: The Language of Starbucks

2008; Wiley; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00529.x

1540-5931

Constance M. Ruzich,

Media Studies and Communication

Easy chairs, quiet jazz, and caffe lattes: starbucks' coffee shops have become America's public living and dining rooms, or as company founder Howard Schultz describes his stores, “an extension of people's front porch” (Serwer and Bonamici). As of January 2004, there were over 7,500 Starbucks locations in 28 countries (Serwer and Bonamici), and based on company predictions, some believe that “The number of Starbucks locations worldwide could someday rival the total of McDonalds' restaurants” (Bishop). This paper will examine the ways in which Starbucks' use of language appeals to more than our craving for caffeine. In his book Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks argues that the dominant tone of American culture has been set by America's new educated elite, or “bobos,” a term meshing bohemians with bourgeois (11). Brooks notes that bobos have “combined the countercultural sixties and the achieving eighties into one social ethos … . So the people who thrive in this period are the ones who can turn ideas and emotions into products” (10). Starbucks Corporation has associated coffee with the language of love: self-love, romantic love, and philanthropic love. Starbucks' corporate use of language is carefully crafted to appear as comforting as hot cocoa with “extra whip,” as hot as a steamed latte, and as socially conscious as the Fair Trade coffee offered for sale in their stores. The history of coffee production, consumption, and advertising has less to do with love, however, than with conspiracy, colonialism, and capitalism. The drink appears to have been brewed first in Ethiopia, and achieved widespread popularity in the Islamic world during the sixteenth century. At various times during the sixteenth century, Islamic coffeehouses were shut down, and coffee was denounced as a dangerous stimulant that fomented sedition, gambling, and sexual perversion (Pendergrast 6–7, Wild ix). Europeans who were introduced to the addictive beverage quickly grew impatient with the high prices demanded by the Islamic monopoly on coffee, and by the late 1600s had stolen seedlings for export to their own colonies and slave plantations (Wild x, Pendergrast 7). By the eighteenth century, more than 2,000 coffeehouses had sprung up in London alone (Allen 130). They were nicknamed “penny universities” (Pendergrast 12), the price that men paid for a cup of the brew and the accompanying invigorating conversation (women were barred from the communal gathering places). Historians have speculated that coffee may have been responsible for sobering up the mildly intoxicated population of Europe, which was accustomed to drinking alcohol with every meal (Allen 130), and William Ukers, in his 1922 text All About Coffee, has claimed that “wherever it has been introduced it has spelled revolution. It has been the world's most radical drink in that its function has always been to make people think” (qtd. in Pendergrast 17). Following the Boston tea party, coffee became the patriotic drink of choice for revolutionary Americans, yet as Pendergrast in Uncommon Grounds has noted with irony, “by 1788 San Domingo supplied half of the world's coffee. The coffee, therefore, that fueled Voltaire and Diderot [not to mention Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams] was produced by the most inhuman form of coerced labor” (18). In The Devil's Cup, Stewart Allen plays with the idea that coffee may be linked to the improvement of civilizations: When coffee was the sole provenance of the Arabs, their civilization flourished beyond all others. Once the Ottomans got hold of the bean, they became the most powerful and tolerant nation on the planet. Its early appearance in Great Britain helped jump-start that nation's drive for world dominance. It was in the cafes of Paris that the French Revolution was born (134). It could more easily be argued, however, that rather than crediting coffee with the improvement of civilizations, history suggests that the people who have controlled coffee production and distribution have improved their own lives, often at the expense of those who actually grow the crops and harvest the beans. The nineteenth century saw the rise of coffee as an international commodity and the accompanying development of coffee-based economies in South America and other developing nations. In Guatemala and El Salvador, the wealthy elite managed large coffee plantations for substantial profits while indigenous people labored on the plantations for bare survival. In Costa Rica, however, small family farms were the norm and so the growth of the industry was less exploitative (Pendergrast 41). In States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America, Robert G. Williams concludes that: … world system forces did not transplant into Central America any particular mode of economic or political organization … . Imperialist actors, whether seen as powerful outside states or international investors, cannot be viewed as the ones who determined the economic and political structures that emerged; rather, local subjects and local institutions played the decisive role in shaping the outcomes. Nevertheless, world system forces significantly altered the environment within which local structures evolved (236). The recent efforts of the World Bank to support Vietnam's developing coffee industry has again demonstrated the nature of the tangled web that makes up the global coffee economy. Vietnam's low labor costs, coupled with its successful production of low-grade Robusta coffee (as opposed to the higher-quality, more labor-intensive Arabica variety of bean), caused world coffee prices to plummet in the late 1990s. By 2000, “Vietnam had become the world's second largest coffee producer after Brazil,” further depressing the falling price of coffee in the international market (Wild 6). While wholesale coffee prices fell, consumers saw no corresponding reduction in coffee prices. In New Guinea, India, Nicaragua, and Africa, small land holders and coffee workers reportedly “abandoned their plantations” and “uprooted their worthless coffee plants” (Wild 9). At the same time, multinational corporations who controlled the coffee industry posted record profits. Vietnam's success has dealt a serious blow to other coffee-producing nations and has inadvertently aided multinational corporations, once again highlighting the ironies and contradictions inherent in the history of coffee: The coffee industry has dominated and molded the economy, politics, and social structure of entire countries. On the one hand, its monocultural avatar has led to the oppression and land dispossession of indigenous peoples, the abandoning of subsistence agriculture in favor of exports, overreliance on foreign markets, destruction of the rain forest, and environmental degradation. On the other hand, coffee has provided an essential cash crop for struggling family farmers, the basis for national industrialization and modernization, a model of organic production and fair trade, and a valuable habitat for migratory birds. How big is the global coffee industry and how far does its influence extend? Coffee is second only to oil as the most valuable trading commodity in the world (Wild 3, Pendergrast xv). Various estimates as to how many people depend on the growing of coffee for their livelihood range from 20 to 125 million (Pendergrast xvi, Waridel 31, Wild 1). Current global sales of coffee are estimated at approximately $55 billion a year, while only 13% of that (or approximately $7 billion) is retained by exporting nations (Wild 3). Four multinational corporations dominate world markets, accounting for 40% of the coffee trade: Nestle, Philip Morris, Sara Lee, and Procter & Gamble (Wild 3, Pendergrast 422). Despite the attention that Starbucks has drawn, it has not yet reached the status of a major player in world markets, and in the United States, Dunkin' Donuts still sells more coffee than any specialty coffee retailer (Pendergrast 423). One of Starbucks' chief contributions to the coffee industry, however, has been its success in gaining new consumers, or coffee converts. Following the Second World War, per capita coffee consumption in the United States began to decline. The major producers found themselves in a vicious circle of lowering prices and quality so that “no amount of advertising could move the shoddy products the major roasters offered” (Pendergrast 344). Henry Peet is widely credited with the coffee revival in the United States: in 1966 he opened a small business in Berkley, California that sold roasted whole-bean coffee for home use. Selling his coffee with “passionate authority,” Peet attempted to educate American consumers about quality specialty coffees (Pendergrast 292). At the beginning, the specialty coffee movement in the United States was dynamic and fragmented. Early competition was not from what Schultz would later term “the sleeping giants” (Maxwell House, owned by Philip Morris; Folgers, owned by Procter & Gamble; or Hills Brothers and Chase & Sanborn, both owned by Nestle) because the major coffee traders did not move into specialty coffee or coffee houses. Instead, specialty coffee retailers were local stores that expanded within a region. Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971, joining other burgeoning specialty coffee outlets such as Peet's, Gloria Jean's, Coffee Beanery, Coffee Connection, Second Cup, Barnies, and Brothers. Some of these businesses have since been bought out (Peet's, Gloria Jean's), some have declared bankruptcy (Brothers), and some have remained viable regional enterprises, but none have achieved Starbucks' success. In the January of 2004, Fortune magazine reported that Starbucks' revenues “continue at above 20% a year … . Starbucks stock was up 56% last year and 3,028% since its 1992 IPO-and is now hitting all-time highs” (Serwer and Bonamici). The company's revenues for 2003 reached $4.1 billion, and net earnings were a record $268.3 million (“ORIN SMITH”). Currently, Starbucks Corporation opens three to four new stores a day (Tice); average customers frequent the store five times a month and heavy users as many as eighteen times in thirty days (Theodore), while Goldman Sachs analysts have estimated that 10% of Starbucks' customers come in twice a day (Schwartz). Schultz has attributed this success to the attitude and ambiance that infuses the Starbucks culture: “We aren't in the coffee business, serving people. We are in the people business, serving coffee,” or, to put it more simply, “Starbucks is pretty darn nice place to hang out” (Serwer and Bonamici). The definition of the Starbucks' brand, “a brand that is defined as much by attitude as by products” has been accomplished with almost no reliance on traditional advertising (McDowell). Instead, Schultz has attempted to woo consumers through the seductive experience offered in Starbucks cafes, an experience that Schultz claims has “earned customers' trust by speaking to their hearts as well as their heads” (Koehn 207). But while much has been written on the ways in which Starbucks uses aromas, music, colors, textures, and even furniture to create the Starbucks' experience (Koehn 207; Kuntzman; Schultz and Yang 253), scant attention has been paid to Starbuck's skillful use of language as part of the game of seduction. In Schultz's own book on his company (fittingly titled Pour Your Heart into It), he describes the ways in which “we build the romance of coffee into the visual design of every store” (253), but his only discussion of the language used to create and maintain the love affair is a mention of using cups “to carry messages … including three ‘chapters’ of our history … during our twenty-fifth anniversary celebration” (253). It is nothing short of remarkable that “Starbucks became a household word without mounting a national advertising campaign. Indeed, the company spent less than $10 million on advertising in its first twenty-five years” (Pendergrast 378). Advertising Age termed Starbucks a “word-of-mouth wonder” (Cuneo 12), but Starbucks has been exceptionally careful as to what words are put into people's mouths. The company's use of in-store language is as crafted and creative as its brewing of specialty drinks, and amounts to nothing less than a national advertising campaign played out on the local level every day, in every store. When describing Starbucks' approach to advertising, Schultz provides only an oblique reference to language before returning to a discussion of the experience provided in the stores: “We aim for the unexpected, the offbeat, the clever. Coming up with just the right message and tone has proven much harder than I imagined. My highest aim is to have not just our advertising but the entire Starbucks experience provide human connection and personal enrichment in cherished moments, around the world, one cup at a time” (266). Brooks in Bobos in Paradise makes the claim, however, that language is central to appealing to today's consumers: Nor is it ever enough just to buy something; one has to be able to discourse upon it. That is why, for example, the Lands' End catalogue doesn't just show off, say, a nice tweed jacket. It has little bits of text all around describing the Celtic roots of tweed, relating an interesting 14th-century legend about tweed, explaining why the best lambswool is sheared in the first six months of a lamb's life, and noting that the jacket is made by adorable old men with lined faces (99). Starbucks' attempts to associate coffee with the unexpected, offbeat, and clever, and with the language of love is a distinct break from traditional ways in which coffee has been advertised in America. Previously, coffee advertising had focused on taste and the effects of caffeine. Folgers' tried to persuade consumers that “the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup,” and Maxwell House confidently proclaimed their coffee was “good to the last drop.” When advertisers did appeal to emotion, they “played on women's fears and fantasies” (Koehn 213). In the early 1960s, Folgers ads spotlighted Mrs. Olsen, a “coffee-brewing busybody … who berated countless housewives for serving substandard coffee and ruining their husband's happiness” (Koehn 213). A Maxwell House television commercial of the period featured a husband who expressed his spousal devotion with the promise “Be a good little Maxwell Housewife, and I think I'll keep you around” (Koehn 214). And a Chock Full o'Nuts print ad depicted a poor wife who had failed in her womanly duties: a coffee cup overturned on her head, coffee running down her face, the ad explained “Men! Don't let it come to this! Win your fight for a decent cup of coffee without losing your temper!” The moral of the story appeared beneath the photo: good coffee was “every man's right … every wife's duty” (Koehn 213). Howard Schultz explains that Starbucks' departure from traditional advertising approaches arose out of a trip to Italy that he took in the early 1980s: As I watched [Italian coffee bar interactions], I had a revelation: Starbucks had missed the point—completely missed it. This is so powerful! I thought. This is the link. The connection to the people who loved coffee did not have to take place only in their homes … What we had to do was unlock the romance and mystery of coffee, firsthand, in coffee bars. The Italians understood the personal relationship that people could have to coffee, its social aspect. I couldn't believe that Starbucks was in the coffee business, yet was overlooking so central an element of it. The central element of Starbucks' crafted use of language has, from the beginning, revolved around love and its three manifestations: self-love, romantic or relational love, and philanthropic love. In its appeal to self-love, Starbucks sells comfort, self-indulgence, and relaxed affluence. Starbucks is not a store, but “an oasis … a small escape during a day when many other things are beating you down” (Schultz and Yang 119). On the wall of my local Starbucks, a blue and green sea-washed mural depicts a goddess/mermaid, and graceful script lettering eight-to-twelve inches high promises that this is the home of “Lively Impressions” and the experience that “Evokes Another World.” The in-store display for green tea describes the blend as “delightful” and “premium,” and for those discerning enough to indulge, it “awakens the mind and soothes the soul” (“Tazo China Green Tips”). The advertising brochure for soy milk touts the merits of the “noble soybean,” educates intellectuals on the history of the bean (dating back to the time of the Chinese Emperor Shang-Nung in 2838 BC), and places them in a long tradition of health and good taste. Those savvy enough to choose a milk that “may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease” while making every beverage “creamy and delicious” can be proud of their virtue, intelligence, and good sense (“Silk Soymilk”). Starbucks also encourages its customers to view their drinks as extensions of their personalities, as ways of communicating their uniqueness. The in-store brochure “Make It Your Drink” asks “And what does your drink say about you?” It points out the multiple options for self-identification and for establishing an image, commenting: … at Starbucks, we think what you drink reveals more about who you are. We've noticed, for example, that triple, grande, decaf latte people aren't the same as tall, iced caramel macchiato drinkers. So what's your drink? If you don't have a favorite yet, we'll help you find it … You have a lot of choices at Starbucks! Starbucks is willing to provide the same assistance with music, helping customers feel hip and discerning. Although Schultz was initially hesitant to branch out into music sales, he “began to understand that our customers looked to Starbucks as a kind of editor. It was like, ‘We trust you. Help us choose’ ” (Serwer and Bonamici). Starbucks' Web site promotes sales of their music compilations, inviting customers to “Think of them as mixed tapes from a friend. We create our compilations to help people discover their next favorite song” (“Starbucks Coffee”). Comfort, self-indulgence, and relaxed affluence all combine in Starbucks' attempts to associate coffee with fine wine. If coffee is the “last socially acceptable addiction” (Schwartz and Yang), then Starbucks has elevated the humble brew by introducing discussions of estates, harvests, origins, and tasting notes. Starbucks' Web site currently offers a “Coffee Matcher” questionnaire, with questions such as the following: What taste characteristic do you look for in a cup of coffee? It should taste good, but not too strong. It must be richer than I'd find in a typical diner or fast-food coffee. It should be complex enough to make me think, without overwhelming my senses. The wilder, the better … I like to experiment. What sort of flavors do you generally enjoy? Simple, mild flavors. Fresh, vibrant tastes that aren't too rich and complex. Bold and distinctive flavors with lots of subtleties I can taste. I like extremes: heavy, rich, spicy, intense. The more, the better (“Starbucks Coffee”). In Pour Your Heart into It, Schultz explains “We wanted to introduce them to fine coffees the way wine stewards bring forward fine wines” (246). Starbucks' coffee is not just good to the last drop; it is an aesthetic experience to be relished and appreciated by connoisseurs. Starbucks' coffee-tasting notes are comparable to descriptions found in Wine Spectator, and they appeal not only to self-indulgent connoisseurs, but also to romantics. The Web site and in-store coffee board descriptions of various blends can easily be imagined as personal ads seeking for love: is your ideal mate “powerful and exotic” (Arabian Mocha Java), “elegant and intriguing” (Guatemala Antigua), “bold and earthy” (Decaf Sumatra), or “rich and complex, with depth and sweetness” (Decaf Caffe Verona)? The Web site's “Coffee Matcher” classifies results in a manner any dating service would envy; matches are categorized as being a “sure thing,”“adventurous,” or downright “daring” (“Starbucks Coffee”). Schultz, recounting the company's attempt to develop its image, comments, “But as time went on, we realized that our stores had a deeper resonance and were offering benefits as seductive as the coffee itself … . Just having the chance to order a drink as exotic as an espresso macchiato adds a spark of romance to an otherwise unremarkable day” (Schultz and Yang 119). Starbucks' attempts to recreate the social experiences and communal rituals of Italian cafés and British pubs have been aided by company language designed to foster feelings of belonging and connection. Schultz, the company's founder, has proudly pointed to Starbucks' stores as providing its customers with the sanctuary of a “third place,” a term coined by Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place (1989). Oldenburg argues that American society is caught in shuttling between two worlds: the stresses of the workplace and the insular privacy of the home. Unlike Europeans (and earlier generations of Americans), modern Americans do not “hang out” in bars, beauty salons, cafes, or pubs, and so they find themselves lacking “the third realm of satisfaction and social cohesion beyond the portals of home and work that for others is an essential element of the good life” (9). Perhaps in an effort to provide this missing community center, Starbucks corporate headquarters have asked employees (or as one brochure names them, “partners”) to request customers' names when they order (“We'd Love to Hear Your Thoughts”). In-store advertisements for those seeking employment offer the invitation to “Create Warmth” or “Create Community” and “Make a difference in someone's day” (“Starbucks Careers”). Starbucks' Web site encourages friends to make contact, offering free e-cards: “Get in touch with a friend and go out for that proverbial cup of coffee you always talk about. We've created e-cards to make getting together a little easier. Stay in touch, go on more coffee breaks” (“Starbucks Coffee”). And in a 2004 Valentine's Day promotion, Starbucks cafes displayed a poster accompanying holiday merchandise that read: My pet name for him is Schmoopy And for putting up with that I think he deserves a really great gift. For those familiar with pop culture and Seinfeld, there was an inside joke: the nickname “Schmoopy” was mocked in the “Soup Nazi” episode, as Jerry and his current girlfriend nauseatingly repeated the term of endearment. Several Pittsburgh area stores reported that customers who were enamored with the sign had sought to purchase it. With big-hearted generosity, stores acknowledged that after promotional campaigns have finished, they routinely give away these kinds of displays to their loyal customers. Starbucks has become the local equivalent of Cheers' bar: a corporate chain store where “everybody knows your name,” an extended family, a communal watering hole and gathering place. However, Oldenburg's book includes an often-overlooked caution against the commercialization of that sacred third place: “the development of an informal public life depends upon people finding and enjoying one another outside the cash nexus. Advertising, in its ideology and effects, is the enemy of an informal public life. It breeds alienation. It convinces people that the good life can be purchased” (11). Starbucks may have become America's living room, but capitalism, with its attendant handmaidens of advertising and consumerism, have clearly decorated the space. As Thomas M. Kando has noted in Leisure and Popular Culture in Transition, “In our society … leisure has been perverted into consumption” (qtd. in Oldenburg 11). Starbucks' challenge lies in the balancing of two contradictory identities: it wants to become an ever-expanding multinational corporation and retain the image of a friendly small business. The company's in-store language can be viewed as a rhetorical solution to the dilemma, an attempt to sustain the myth of the noncommercial coffee house, denying consumerism while creating visions of community and connection. But while the ambiance of self-satisfaction, romance, and connectedness may continue to attract customers, Starbucks cannot afford to be identified with self-complacency. Bobos in Paradise author, David Brooks, acknowledges this in Rule 5 of the “The Code of Financial Correctness”: “The educated elites are expected to practice one-downmanship” (93). Brooks explains that bobos “guiltily acknowledge our privileges but surround ourselves with artifacts from the less privileged. It's not that we're hypocrites. It's just that we're seeking balance. Affluent, we're trying not to become materialists” (96). For those who might feel guilty about spending $3.00 for a cup of coffee, Starbucks offers expiation for the sin—“Every time you purchase Starbucks Fair Trade Blend, you're also making a difference, helping to improve the lives of the farmers who grow it” (“Starbucks and Fair Trade,” 2002). In-store brochures promoting Fair Trade coffees explain that “over half the world's coffee is produced on small family farms” (“Starbucks and Fair Trade,” 2000). These same brochures, much like “Save the Children” appeals, feature photos and stories of these families. Men like Kembridge Tokave from Kainantu, New Guinea own “one of the coffee farms that produce the only cash crop in the area and provide a livelihood to members of his family, extended family, clan and village—nearly 4,000 people” (“Starbucks and Fair Trade,” 2002), while couples such as Santiago and Ermelinda Rivera, through partnering with Starbucks' Fair Trade program are improving the lives of their six children who are now “eating better and staying in school longer” (“Starbucks and Fair Trade,” 2000). Starbucks' “Commitment to Origins” campaign describes the company's “Role in the Global Coffee Community” as one that has “built enduring relationships with coffee growers,” while promoting “cultivation methods that protect biodiversity” (“Commitment to Origins”). Starbucks' in-store literature and Web site also detail the company's partnership with “Jumpstart,” an organization dedicated to developing the literacy and social skills of at-risk children (“Starbucks and Jumpstart”). Starbucks' customers are not just drinking coffee, but supporting causes: “Every time you purchase Starbucks' coffee, you're also making a difference, helping to improve people's lives, and encouraging conservation where our coffee is grown” (“Commitment to Origins”). Is Starbucks really working to improve the environment and the lives of those dependent upon the coffee industry, or is this just another example of exceptionally skillful window-dressing and advertising? Yes, and yes. Starbucks can truthfully claim that they pay higher prices for coffee than others as they generally buy higher-quality specialty coffees (Wild 4). The company is also one of the most visible US promoters of fair-trade coffee, coffee that has been “sold directly by producer cooperatives to an importer or fair-trade organization” in attempts to ensure that those most directly involved in planting and harvesting the beans receive a living wage (Waridel 63). The company pays their employees better than most fast-food retailers and offers benefits to all employees working more than twenty hours a week; these employment practices may be linked to an employee turnover rate of “only 60 percent a year, compared to the industry average of 200 percent or more” (Pendergrast 374). And Starbucks donates more to CARE than any US corporation, earmarking its contributions for aid to coffee-producing countries (Pendergrast 375). Yet critics are justified in pointing out that Starbucks has gained a great deal of publicity at a comparatively low cost: corporate donations make up <0.2% of net sales (Pendergrast 375), and fair-trade coffee, while always available for whole-bean sale, is typically brewed in stores only once a month (on Fair Trade Day). Now that Starbucks is no longer a struggling underdog, the company has become a lightning rod for all kinds of criticism directed at the twisted and labyrinthine economic pressures within the coffee industry: with great power (and great advertising) comes great responsibility. While it may be the Beatles who sang “All You Need Is Love,” it is Starbucks who is jazzily improvising on the message in thousands of retail outlets across America and throughout the world. On the front door of my neighborhood Starbucks, a cheery sign warms the hearts of all who enter: “Make it your Starbucks. Make it an experience. Make it a daily necessity. Make it an occasional treat. Make it a happy place. Make it a fortress of solitude. Make it bouncy. Make it what you want to be.” Starbucks' song of love, however, is set to the tune of power: the power of capitalism, the power of caffeine addiction, the powerful lure of the third place, and the power of persuasive appeals. The language of Starbucks aims to seduce us with comfort, romance us with relationships, and assure us that we are all working together for the good of the underprivileged. Consumers who patronize the chain should examine the in-store language for what it is—an advertising campaign, which to be successful must have an element of truth, but which, like all advertising, should be scrutinized and recognized as a high-stakes effort to manipulate, persuade, and sell. Constance M. Ruzich is a Professor of English Studies at Robert Morris University. She holds a PhD in Writing from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in English from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research examines the ways in which language practices inform action and shape identity.