Starbucks: A Visual Cup o' Joe
How does a lone coffee store in Seattle's busy Pike Place market become
North America's leading retail coffee purveyor? Starbucks created an ambiance
and style that infused new chic into this age-old beverage, making it the hip
drink of the '90s.
"Retail is detail," an adage cited by Starbucks' chairman and CEO Howard
Schultz, is a dictum borne out in every aspect of the company's operations. It
has turned the consumption of a mundane beverage that's been around for
centuries into a trendy and indispensable social ritual. Before Starbucks burst
onto the national scene, drinking coffee had rarely been so stylish. Now,
orders for "espresso", "lattes" and "no-whip mochas" are drowning out the
simpler requests of yesteryear.
Starbucks moved this beverage out of the kitschy coffee shops, with their
waitresses in frilly aprons, and banished all remnants of the dark, smoky
beatnik era. The Starbucks sensation is driven not just by the quality of its
products but by the entire atmosphere surrounding the purchase of coffee: the
openness of its store space, the beauty of its packaging, friendly and
knowledgeable service, interesting menu boards, the shape of its counter, the
quality of lighting, the texture of the walls, the cleanliness of the
floorboards. What Starbucks recognized long before its imitators was that the
art of retailing coffee went way beyond product.
The details of the total experience mattered. Insight into the importance
of the coffee-drinking environment came in 1983 when Schultz, then director of
retail operations, was in Milan. Noting that Italy had some 200,000 espresso
bars, he observed the customs of the coffee-drinking public and experienced an
epiphany about offering a haven for American coffee lovers. "Coffee houses in
Italy are a third place for people after home and work," he reported. "There's
a relationship of trust and confidence in that environment."
Returning to Seattle, Schultz convinced the original Starbucks founders
to test the coffee bar concept. Its overwhelming success led Schultz, backed by
local investors, to acquire Starbucks in 1987. Since then, Starbucks has
crafted a look, a feel, a mood to catapult itself into national prominence and
profitability. Every particular -- from napkins to coffee bags, store fronts to
window seats, annual reports to mail order catalogs, table tops to thermal
carafes -- seems to reflect what Myra Gose, director of Creative Services and
self-described "keeper of the look," calls "the authentic and organic" roots of
Starbucks, its strong sensitivity about community, the environment and what it
takes to make a great cup of coffee.
"All our design, whether it's a packaged food or a new mug, needs to make
sense and tell what we're about," Gose explains. "We're a coffee company. We
don't want people scratching their heads, wondering `Hey, where did that come
from?'" Underscoring Starbucks' phenomenal success is its constant vigilance
over retail design and packaging. The story of Starbucks may be less about
coffee.
But not just any kind of coffee company. With a product line that
includes over 30 varieties of coffee beans, a heaping assortment of packaged
goods, fresh pastries, teas, syrups, and preserves, and a cache of related
specialty merchandise -- not to mention a new bottled product being
test-marketed by PepsiCo, and several proprietary brand names in each retail
store in addition to the Starbucks label -- defining and refining the corporate
image is an ongoing strategic imperative.
That process is supported at the highest levels of the business. In the
summer of 1992, company officers asked Starbucks' marketing staff whether the
current packaging of so many diverse products accurately reflected the warm,
upbeat, people-oriented style that had won the company its tenacious following.
According to Gose, "From a design standpoint, we're always trying to speak with
one voice, yet that one voice must also speak different languages."
To present those languages visually, several design firms were
interviewed. Seattle-based Hornall Anderson Design Works (HADW) was chosen to
begin with a redesign of the coffee bag. The guidelines were solidly outlined
by Starbucks: 1) Do nothing revolutionary, since the company had too much
equity built into the current coffee bag; 2) Retain the company logo and
"blend" stamps; 3) Emphasize the company's leading-edge role in the industry
and its employees' superior knowledge of good coffee preparation; and 4) Convey
the company's deep commitment to the environment.
Working with several Starbucks principals, what the design team created
did not dramatically alter the image of Starbucks; however, where the packaging
did not reinforce the desired image, steps were taken to make it stronger. For
example, the design combined terra-cotta earth tones, for the warmth and
intimate feeling the company wanted to convey, with a steam pattern to
represent the roasting process. An illustration style, photography
specifications, limited calligraphy and the mermaid logo formed the vernacular
for the Starbucks look. Focus groups helped to decide the selection of a single
color for all the bags instead of different colors for different sizes.
Packaging materials were selected for naturalness and recyclability.
Following the coffee bag assignment, HADW helped steer other design jobs
to create an integrated, communicative packaging effect: syrup labels, shopping
and serving bags, food products, gift sets, various printed collateral -- even
the wrapping tissues that are used to protect breakable items. These designs
have earned HADW more than 40 awards, as well as inclusion of its packaging
components in the Library of Congress permanent collection. For Starbucks, the
entire design strategy "fortifies an ever-present message about its leadership
position and reinforces its commitment to quality products and service," says
Terry Heckler, head of Heckler Associates, a long-time graphic design partner
of Starbucks. Heckler is credited with not only designing the original logo but
coming up with the company's name.
With so much attention going into the look of a coffee cup or pastry
napkin, little wonder that a constant watch is placed over the design of the
coffee bars themselves. "It didn't take top management long to realize that
good store design enhances the speed of retail execution," says Heckler. The
store design staff includes about 80 people divided into regional teams. Each
team is headed by a lead designer working with a staff of up to 10 other
designers, including several CAD drafters, and the construction manager for the
region.
Starbucks' design development team is directed by Brooke McCurdy, whose
job is to provide leading-edge resources to the store design effort and "to
think about what we're going to look like in the year 3000, or whenever it is
we hit the moon!" laughs McCurdy. "We're already looking at ways we can improve
our existing design by focusing on what customers and employees think about the
look of their stores, and at the same time, we try to anticipate future
consumer styles. Is it going to be something new and fast-paced, or will it be
a more cyclical return to the old bohemian coffee house?"
At Starbucks, no one becomes a store designer until he or she has
actually operated behind the counter. "You have to work in a store before you
design one, so you begin to understand what some of the hindrances and helpful
things are," explains McCurdy. Though working with a set of base guidelines and
stringent timelines, designers can vary the look by region and location with
art, murals and lighting fixtures. "Our people get to know the neighborhood and
the customers in the area, and they have the latitude to incorporate its
quirkiness or uniqueness so that we don't ever produce a cookie-cutter design,"
McCurdy says.
At the same time, there is a subliminal unifying theme to all the stores
that ties into the company's history and mission -- "back to nature" without
the laid-back attitude; community-minded without stapled manifestos on the
walls. The design of a Starbucks store is intended to provide both unhurried
sociability and efficiency on-the-run, an appreciation for the natural goodness
of coffee and the artistry that grabs you even before the aroma. This approach
is reflected in the designers' generous employment of natural woods and richly
layered, earthy colors (which have evolved from darker laminates to lighter
tones) along with judicious high-tech accessorizing, like halogen fixtures and
Zolatone walls (subtly textured splatter-paint finishes). No matter how
individual the store, overall store design seems to correspond closely to the
company's first and evolving influences: the clean, unadulterated crispness of
the Pacific Northwest combined with the urban suavity of an espresso bar in
Milan. "Comfortable without seeming too serious," says McCurdy. "An urban
oasis," said the New York Times.
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