Filter-style coffee, in an instant

“Starbucks. We found a way.” ran the tagline at US press conference. And now it’s landing in the UK. Following the US launch in February 2009, Via Ready Brew Instant Sachets are being rolled out in outlets nationwide before hitting supermarket shelves, where a pack of 12 will go for £4.45 – compared to a 40-50 serving jar of Nescafé Alta Rica, the most expensive range currently on the market.

Then again, the brand isn’t (just) competing with Nescafe and the instant market – or, for that matter, in-home consumption, where it’s been present for years. According to CEO Howard Schultz, the brand is aiming to ‘disrupt’ the coffee consumption landscape, ‘reinvent a category, create new rituals and grow their customer base’.

More talk than walk?

Read between the lines, and this is mainly an exercise in damage control: before in-home (and 'in-office') consumption replaces out-of-home entirely, premium blends replace instant granules, and convenient formats like soluble coffee cubes and closed cartridge systems become the standard go-to (one worst case scenario). Or before Starbucks’s already ambivalent customers lose interest altogether, its 13% of negative endorsers grows, and their most loyal customers so far, the 16-34-year-olds, migrate to more affordable chains that fit their budgets (other worst case scenario).

Problem is, the Via sachets don’t exactly do much to address any of these issues – something Mintel had already pointed out prior to the US launch. As in the UK, the goal over the pond was to tap into the growing in-home market. Except US in-home consumption is largely driven by brewed coffee – while demand for instant is highest among lower-income households whose main priority is price (see Mintel’s December 2009 report, Coffee – US). Via offers neither.

Perhaps most tellingly, fewer than one-fifth of regular UK coffee drinkers surveyed in Mintel's February 2010 report expressed an interest in buying coffee shop-branded instant coffee.

And as for the brand’s attempts to promote use in baking – wouldn’t using standard coffee granules be more logical?

Not so earth-shattering, after all

Our verdict? Try harder next time. Or, to quote Asian business correspondent Leo Lewis, commenting on the concurrent launch in Japan: “The unification of Italy was plotted from the overstuffed armchairs of a coffee shop in Turin. The London Stock Exchange was founded in a cosy City teahouse. In South America, more revolutions have been planned in coffee shops than in any other type of establishment. There was coffee life worldwide before Seattle adopted it as its own.”

And if the domestic space or home office are gearing up for revolution - well, they can do it without the help of instant Starbucks.