Ubiquitous Starbucks waters down Paris debut
January 16, 2004 - The Chicago Tribune
PARIS—With Friday’s opening of the first Starbucks coffee shop in France, the potential for a culture clash would seem to be quite high, as the ubiquitous American giant invades the turf of an age-old cafe culture.
Starbucks has done its best to enter Paris with the least amount of splash. Until a news conference Thursday morning, its only outward communication of the store’s opening on Avenue de l’Opera was a late September news release announcing an “early 2004” opening in Paris. In the week before the news briefing, interview requests were denied and few French papers bothered writing about the opening.
At the briefing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz nearly chanted words like “sensitivity” and “respect” when referring to the French and their cafes.
This low-key, non-confrontational approach seems far from accidental. France is well-known for protesting the presence of multinational organizations, particularly if they are American. In 1999, French farmer Jose Bove became a national hero after he drove his tractor through the front of a McDonald’s restaurant.
When responding to a question on how Starbucks could avoid a similar fate, Schultz said, “You have to demonstrate a general sensitivity to the local market. When people get to know us, the question becomes subordinate to the relationship with the customer.”
Little threat seen to cafes
As a sociologist who studies the connection between cities and commerce for the French public-research organization CNRS, Rene Peron thinks Starbucks’ chances for success are high. “These places may have a bad image,” he said, “but this type of store is now well-implanted in Paris and throughout France.
“There’s a difference between what people say about this kind of multinational store or product and the reality of what they do. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are implanted in France and across the European Union. There’s a critique and a resistance, but they aren’t apt to keep it from happening.”
Outlets such as the Disney Store occupy prime real estate on the Champs Elysees, and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut have added a strange hue to the fabric of France.
Peron and many French, including owners of smaller cafes, see little threat of Starbucks taking business from cafes.
“In France, there are many different kinds of cafe: A local cafe might have mostly unemployed people during the day, then there are more chic cafes in the center of town, and next to it you’ll find two or three others that correspond to a certain clientele,” Peron said. “When a cafe from another culture arrives, we will have another concept of what a cafe is.”
A French cafe also serves as a bar that stays open late and a place to eat and socialize. On a more practical side, it is often a place to send mail and buy Metro passes, lottery tickets and cigarettes.
Blase about American brew
“It depends where you go in Paris. It’s about the coffee, the ambience of the place itself, a laid-back atmosphere, good service and a nice welcome,” said Manon Griggio, a customer at her neighborhood cafe, La Mere Lachaise, where no one behind the bar had ever heard of Starbucks.
Claire Chaudiere is a graduate student in the French city of Lille as well as co-owner of Le Rendez-Vous des Amis, a cafe in Paris’ Montmartre district. Her experience as an exchange student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison made her familiar with Starbucks.
“It wouldn’t bother me if they open two or three here, but if they really begin to multiply, that changes everything—it’s no longer a discovery for the French,” Chaudiere said. “There would be protests against this industrialization, but I don’t think people will like the American style of coffee enough for it to work that well.”
With one store open, two set to go before late February and a goal of eight to 10 in the first year, it soon may be apparent whether Starbucks has gone too far.
Most European countries have few Starbucks stores. However, Spain has 20, Germany 28 and Britain has 192 in London alone and another 192 across the country.
“[The three stores in the works in France] are certainly a testing of those waters—it’s a way to see how the milieu reacts before invading,” Peron said.
If the mermaid logo started multiplying around Paris, he sees a different sort of backlash: “People might end up clinging tighter to their culture and start going back to the more typical cafes.”
