In Paris, talking softly and carrying a big cup
January 16, 2004 - The Star-Ledger
PARIS—Nothing could be more French than sitting outside a Parisian cafe, sipping a tiny espresso and watching the world go by.
Nothing could be more American than grabbing a large to-go cup at Starbucks on the way to work.
What happens when the American coffee juggernaut sets up shop on the streets of Paris? With today’s opening of the first Starbucks in France, the world is about to find out. It may not be the cultural collision some envision.
“French people make fun of American coffee,” says Jason Levin, 28, a native of Randolph in Morris County who is now a business developer in Paris. “Starbucks has an uphill battle on their hands here, but I think they know that.”
Indeed, outside of a September news release announcing the Paris opening “in early 2004” and the construction of the store on Avenue de l’Opera, there has been little publicity.
Yesterday, as the store had its official inauguration, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz stressed that low-key approach. “We are American, but we are extremely respectful of you as a people,” he said at a news conference.
“We have to earn the loyalty of the French customer,” he said. “We are coming in here in a very humble way.”
Seattle-based Starbucks has been in Europe for six years, starting with Britain, Switzerland and Austria. It sees its international business posting an operating profit overall in fiscal 2004 for the first time in its eight years of global expansion.
In France, the coffee giant is be hoping to avoid the experience of McDonald’s several years ago. Seen as a cultural homogenizer and culinary backwater in the land of high culture and haute cuisine, the Golden Arches engendered such a backlash that French farmer José Bové became a hero when he drove his tractor through the front of a McDonald’s outlet.
Schultz said the company is taking a “long-term view” in France, where pre-launch research showed people remain skeptical about “whether coffee from America can measure up.”
With its first two stores in France opening on tourist-heavy Avenue de l’Opéra and in La Défense, the business district to the west of the city, it appears that Starbucks is targeting tourists and businessmen instead of the typical Parisian cafegoer.
“You can’t go after the typical Parisian cafe clients,” said Levin. “Tourists looking for the Starbucks experience, businessmen—La Défense will be perfect for them there. La Défense is the only business area where people are in a hurry in the cafes.
“Outside of that market, I’m skeptical.”
Prices are also a factor for many who stay loyal to the traditional cafe, where a no-frills espresso can often be consumed standing au comptoir—at the counter—for a mere euro ($1.27).
Starbucks is unlikely to match that, although the company said its French price list—a closely guarded secret until today—will reflect market conditions.
The stereotypical Parisian cafe differs greatly from the typical Starbucks; it functions as a place to catch up with the locals over an espresso, and many offer services such as the sale of stamps, cigarettes, subway passes and lottery tickets. It also functions as what Americans would call a bar.
The French perception of Starbucks comes largely from American movies and TV series where large paper cups are taken to go—a concept as foreign to the French as the large, American-style cups of coffee that they call jus de chaussette (“sock juice”).
Joshua Levin, 19, who manages a Starbucks in Randolph and was visiting his brother here, said the chain hasn’t tried to “Frenchify” its appearance. “It looks like any Starbucks you’d see anywhere in the world. It’s exactly the same.
Anne Bory and Claire Chaudière are part-owners of a typical Parisian cafe, Le Rendez-Vous des Amis, who were anxious to check out Starbucks’ offerings in Paris. They aren’t immediately worried, they said, about their tiny cafe’s turf being taken over by a store with a slicker image and big to-go cups, but that would change if there were suddenly 50 Starbucks in Paris.
Though by no means a certainty, that’s a possibility, given Starbucks’ 384 locations in England, 28 in Germany and 20 in Spain.
“If they’re in all the quarters, that changes things,” said Bory.
“I’d rebel against it,” said Chaudière. “There’d be protests. The rest of the country would protest or they wouldn’t go—it’s not that charming.”
Sociologist René Péron, who is working on a book about large retail centers in cities, suggested the possibility of a cultural and economic backlash similar to the one against McDonald’s.
“If people perceive it as a threat, they may reject the newcomer and cling more tightly to their typical Parisian cafe,” he said.
Péron said the opening of McDonald’s pushed many Frenchmen to rediscover classic French food. “There’s even a weekend talk show on French food that came into being as a result,” he said.
Then again, “McDonald’s success also pushed more typical French places to offer McDonald’s-style offerings,” Péron added. “Restaurants started offering rapid, inexpensive prix fixe menus, and crepe stands started proliferating.”
“Opening a Starbucks in France is like trying to open a Pizza Hut in Italy,” said a one- time Seattle-area resident, Kyle Weinandy. A longtime expatriate in Paris, Weinandy doesn’t see the chain proliferating as it has on the other end of the Eurostar train, in London.
“There’s already a coffee culture here,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll see the French jumping up and down to go there. It’ll take a long time to get it into the French vocabulary.”
