Starbucks in Belgium
A couple of months ago, Profacts performed about 400 street interviews about the interest in take-away coffee shops in Belgian tourist cities. More than half of the people who were interviewed were very interested in a coffee shop with take-away coffee and thee. About 1 in 10 even said that they would have bought coffee or thee at the very moment of the interview if there would have been a coffee shop right there. Not surprisingly, the idea of a take away coffee shop was most appealing to young people and to tourists. Old ladies still preferred local coffeeshops where they could also order pancakes or Belgian waffles.
In this research, Profacts also wanted to know which chain of coffee shops was best known, spontaneously as well as aided. Six out of ten interviewed people knew the chain Starbucks and 28% of interviewed people even mentioned this chain spontaneously. Based on these findings we did not understand why Starbucks was not yet present on the Belgian market. Some of the Starbucks-addicts at Profacts – actually only Timothy – went to Brussels Airport hours before his flight a couple of times to try out the Starbucks at Brussels Airport, but it is clearly not the same as a Starbucks in the city.
Apparently, also Starbucks has heard the cry of the Belgian Starbucks fans (or they wanted to stop the constant stream of mails by Timothy), because today Starbucks is opening a new coffee shop in the central train station in Antwerpen. Many train passengers will have an extra ‘attraction’ in the train station Antwerpen-Centraal, but I’m curious whether every passenger will like the Starbucks take-away coffee. Undeniably, there will always be people who still prefer a fresh cup of coffee in a local café. According to Starbucks this is not a problem, because their numbers show that the presence of a Starbucks actually increases the coffee consumption in the venues around the Starbucks. Our own Starbucks-watcher – yes still the one who goes to Brussels airport and who spent a whole day in the first Starbucks in Seattle even though it looks just like a regular Starbucks – thinks this positive effect on the surrounding venues is correct. He is probably biased, but his belief is based on the observation that during a visit to Vienna, one of the authentic coffee capitals in Europe, he saw that the traditional historical coffee houses co-extisted peacefully with the at least 6 Starbucks coffee shops in the city center. Both the Starbucks coffee shops and the traditional coffee houses were crowded at all times of the day.
Anyway, our research results predict a bright future for Starbucks in Belgium and we sincerely hope that also the local coffee houses prosper through the presence of this competitor.