India's 1st Starbucks outlet
"Why don't you visit the Starbucks outlet and review it? A quick mood piece... the bill is on me," says the boss.
Forty-one years after making a modest beginning in Seattle's Pike Place Market, the Starbucks Coffee Company has finally come to India, in a 50:50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages.
(Employees of the newly inaugurated…)
"Why don't you visit the Starbucks outlet and review it? A quick mood piece... the bill is on me," says the boss.
There goes another Saturday, I think. "Should we wait a while? The outlet is at Horniman Circle, next to the Bombay Stock Exchange. The exchange is closed today and it's a half-day for the banks. I think the place might be deserted," I say, half-hoping that he would change his mind.
Twenty minutes later, I am on a Mumbai local, off to sample a cup of coffee, which awaits me 32 kilometres away. Contrary to my fears, I am not the only pilgrim headed to this temple of American coffee. A dozen-odd people are queuing up at the entrance, braving the afternoon heat of Mumbai: families with noisy kids, groups of excitable teenagers and a few middle-aged men, including yours truly, who pretend to be busy with their smartphones, trying hard to hide the embarrassment of having to wait in line for a cup of coffee.
Coffee Break
Inside the outlet, the teenagers pull out their tablets and smartphones — click, click, click. Updates and photos on Twitter follow. The Medusa-esque coffee goddess of Starbucks stares down at you from a wall.
"Papa, this is the biggest Starbucks I have been to," screams a bespectacled eight-year-old with spiked hair. "It's waaay bigger than the one in Hong Kong and Singapore." That's possible: this one is 4,500 sq ft — almost thrice the size of the average Starbucks store in the US. The interiors are swank, trademark wood-and-brown Starbucks finish.
"I am going to get my mama here in the evening. CCD is so dead, dude," says a teenager with braces. Her friend, a plump girl with an accent that is lost in transit between Louisiana and Ludhiana, agrees. Briefly, they panic at the sight of disappearing croissants and tweet about it. Fifty people wait ahead of us —most of them wide-eyed like belles at a village fair.
It reminds me of another day in 1996 — when I was a teenager, with hair on my head and the idea of pocket money was 10 bucks a day. Pizza Corner had opened its first outlet in Chennai and I queuing up with two weeks' pocket money in my wallet, ready to eat my first pizza.
Problem was I didn't know what a pizza looked like. When it arrived, I squeezed the slice with tight, nervous fingers till the onions and olives rained down on my lap. After a few embarrassing minutes, the waiter walked up and mumbled those magic words: "Unlimited soft drinks, saaar."
All was forgotten and my passionate affair with pizzas and large-sized jeans began right then. There are no such embarrassments at Starbucks. Once you get into the store, an American employee hands out little cups of cold vanilla frappuccino. Another employee hands out menus, guides folks through the ordering process. "I have seen nothing like this before," says the American employee, looking starry-eyed at the queues. "I have heard that people waited for hours when the first outlet opened in Brazil, but other than that..."
India Story
Many of those who stood in the queue had been to a Starbucks before. Not surprising because the first outlet is located in uptown Mumbai, where the rich live. Next week, though, Starbucks will open two more outlets, at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and at a mall in the suburb of Goregaon.
The latter will be Starbucks' first real taste of urban, middle-class India. Goregaon is home to middle-class working professionals, Gujarati jewellers and, of course, hundreds of shopkeepers. Most of them will throng to Starbucks, initially, for two reasons. One, Indians are a curious lot. Two, Starbucks has aggressively priced its coffee (Rs 95 for a cappuccino caffe latte).
However, Starbucks has set up shop in India a decade and a half after market leader, Cafe Coffee Day (1,300-plus outlets on the last count), opened its first outlet in Bangalore. Some might say that's too late. It's a mistake Starbucks made in Australia and paid dearly for it (see Between the Lines).
At Starbucks Mumbai, the coffee is hot, the air conditioning freezing cold ("Sorry, we share it with the Croma outlet next door") and the wi-fi patchy. The American employees go about boisterously greeting customers: "How're you doing?" Most customers smile and nod, a little embarrassed by the attention. Starbucks coffee mugs (Made in Thailand) and coffee pouches are stacked neatly near the counters. Nobody is hard-selling them, not yet.
Bill, Please
Finally, after 40 minutes of standing, I arrive at the counter. I order a caramel frappe (grande size) and a walnut-apricot cake. The lady at the counter tries to print a bill. The paper roll gets stuck. Close to 100 people are waiting behind me now. She takes my order, says the bill and grub will be given to me in a while.
I move to another counter, collect my coffee. I sink into a sofa, polish off the frappe (which is excellent). No sign of the bill or the cake. I call a supervisor. The cake arrives along with an apology, no bill yet. I eat the cake and leave, a content man: minus the bill (and the reimbursement). But, then again, what are the chances that the only person at Starbucks who doesn't get the bill turns out to be a reporter? Pretty slim, right?
In Pictures :
The first Starbucks outlet in India opened on October 19, at the Horniman Circle in South Mumbai.
The American coffee giant opened its first cafe near the Bombay Stock Exchange, at the Horniman Circle in Mumbai, on October 20.
As happens when any global chain opens its first outlet in the country, there were long queues on the first day. When I visited the place with a friend a couple of days later, nothing had changed; the queue now stretched well outside the outlet.
It took me 15 minutes to get in, and another half hour to get to the counter. Still, the experience was not altogether unpleasant. The staff was friendly, and serving free samples of Starbucks' trademark Vanilla Frappuccino blended coffee to those standing in line.
Gunny sacks, old milk cans and a hand grinder on the shelves.
The menu has a variety of Italian coffees, tea and the usual assortment of snacks and dessert. I ordered a brewed coffee while my friend had a Java Chip Frappuccino. We ended up spending around Rs.250.
The decor is very Indian.
The Mumbai outlet is huge. Foreigners who were inside claimed they had never seen one as big. The ambience was very Indian: old boxes, dummy books, a hand-grinding machine and large photographs.
It was a bit like being in a curio shop for foreign tourists in India. All in all, an interesting experience.
The store's wall-sized images are eye-catching.
Source : TV Mahalingam, ET Bureau,http://indiatoday.intoday.in
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