Since Seattle’s best is the same company as Starbucks, is it supposed to be a cheaper alternative?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “what happened to seattle’s best coffee“
Since Seattle’s best is the same company as Starbucks, is it supposed to be a cheaper alternative?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “what happened to seattle’s best coffee“
Michael Dougan‘s answer should make it clear that SBC is not supposed to be a cheaper alternative, as there were other reasons Starbucks acquired it.
I have been drinking Starbucks since the early 80’s and have always thought it to be superior to SBC. In addition to making my regular espresso, I now drink K-Cups and have found that while Starbucks makes many excellent choices available, I have yet to find a drinkable SBC K-Cup.
That’s just my opinion. Every coffee drinker has their own preferences!
Short version: Seattle’s Best in Seattle was once an independent brand, it used to be Stewart Brothers Coffee . They had to settle a trademark dispute with another company that had the name first, so changed it to Seattle’s Best . That way, they could keep the same initials, SBC . This was resolved decades ago. But that’s where the brand began. An independent company.
I was in Seattle back in the days when Starbucks and Stewart Brothers Coffee were both relatively small, growing brands, they were competitors. This is in the 1980s. Stewart Brothers had great coffee shops, too, I was as loyal to it as I was to any other coffee shop I frequented, and Seattle, even then, had many coffee shops and espresso bars, it was a lively coffee culture, years ahead of most other cities.
Starbucks, however, grew, and became a dominant force in the local, then national, then international coffee world. Starbucks acquired Seattle’s Best Coffee . For reasons, and under terms, I’m not clear about, but my understanding is that Seattle’s Best had something Starbucks didn’t, SBC was networked in the restaurant industry in a way that Starbucks wasn’t, Seattle’s Best supplied coffee products to a lot of restaurants. Rather than develop that network from scratch, they bought SBC. (or SBC decided to sell the company, and Starbucks was an interested buyer, I’m not sure) Many years after this acquisition, Starbucks purposed the SBC brand name for whatever category they thought best suited their needs. I’m guessing it’s one of their secondary product lines, aimed at a different segment of the market.
Starbucks also roasts and delivers, in some kind of partnership, giant bags of cheap coffee to Costco, under a different brand name, it might even the the Kirkland (Costco) brand. The idea being, I think, that Starbucks preserves its main Starbucks name for their premium coffee, but is also diversified, offering more affordable (inferior, by comparison) coffees down into other markets, too.
That way their customers associate the Starbucks brand with their superior, more expensive coffee. And even within Starbucks brand, there are the more rare and expensive specialty beans, from exotic plantations, or special blends.
This way, Starbucks offers products all the way up and down the scale. Not unusual for a big corporation, with big networks, and vast wholesale and retail channels.