Wake up and smell the discounts

As the weather hits the summer pedal hard, fast food outlets like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza are offering discounts to counter sluggish consumer demand. But before we proceed any further, let’s back up a little. Starbucks in the same category as McDonald’s et al! What are the cordoned-off bits of the world coming to? The very USP of the American global coffeehouse chain is, one thought, providing not just a unique experience for the Pilates enthusiast, software nerd, work-in-progress novelist and variations thereof, but selling high-priced coffee in cardboard cups with a picture of a double-tailed mermaid on them.

Starbucks is a company for which the term QSRs — quick service restaurants — was probably devised so that it could be treated as a separate category of sentient beans from the likes of Café Coffee Day, Barista and Costa. But clearly, the chain wasn’t prepared for the Indian consumer’s priority for pricing before its arrival here in 2012. So even with long lines outside every just-opened Starbucks outlet, we never followed up whether the novelty value transformed into style statement-cum-habit. There’s a lesson Starbucks can learn in bargain-minded India where pricing takes a front seat, even when applied to luxury products: If you’re not Apple, don’t do expensive if you want to be popular When Starbucks starts selling cheap, you can hope for discounted Guccis