The coffee drinking world has received Starbucks' news of a new product launch with, let us say, "some skepticism." Howard Schultz is promising to reinvent the way we drink coffee on the go, by providing us with handy single serving packets of instant soluble coffee.
In the minds of many people, instant soluble coffee is freighted with two associations:
1. Old people
2. Tastes awful
When I hear the phrase "instant coffee" I think of my grandmother. Not because she drank instant coffee - she was a coffee fanatic, and would never stoop to such lows. But because she kept a jar of petrified Sanka in the back of her cupboard for emergencies, and for elderly visitors who preferred the taste of Sanka to a pot of freshly brewed coffee.
Her own mother, who had been born at the turn of the century, greatly preferred the taste of Sanka. Apparently she had developed a taste for it during the rationing of the Great Depression. (I understand the same can be said for pig knuckles, cold ox tongue sandwiches, and Spam.)
My own experience with instant soluble coffee is limited.
Fresh out of college, I worked an entry level job at an extension course provider, one of those places that offer "classes" with titles like "Five Ways to Find The Work You Love" and "Soapmaking 101." I was the only coffee drinker on staff, and in deference to my preference for coffee, my supervisor purchased a box of Maxwell House instant soluble coffee in single serving tea bags. I thanked her for the gesture, which I knew came from the heart, because she was a thrifty woman. For her, buying anything for her staff was a big move.
The tea bags dribbled out a miserable steep of coffee flavoring. It was like regular Maxwell House coffee, but weaker and with a skunkier aftertaste. I found myself caught in a Catch 22: if I didn't use the coffee bags, my boss would feel that her gift had been slighted. If I did use them, she would be encouraged to buy more. In the end, I decided to make a cup once or twice a week just for show, and to claim that I had been converted to tea drinking. All while buying "real" coffee from the stand in the lobby, which I was careful to consume in secret.
In the abstract, Starbucks' new offering is genius. By pitching the instant soluble coffee as a pocket accessory, Starbucks can solve its version of the "final mile" problem: how to deliver Starbucks coffee into those far reaches of life where actual Starbucks coffee is not available. It's a portable insta-Starbucks, and how great is that?!
Unfortunately, even insisting that it be called "soluble coffee" can't overcome the instant soluble instant associations of "old ladies" and "terrible taste" in this consumer's mind. And judging by the public mockery of the new Starbucks announcement, it appears that I am not alone in this.