"Am I crazy, or is that Starbucks truck following me?" might be something overheard on college campuses
soon.
College campuses might be among the few remaining places to
escape the shadow of Starbucks. There are roughly 11,500 Starbucks outlets in the U.S., but only about 300 of them are on U.S. campuses. That means
most students of the country’s 4,700 colleges are buying
their coffee somewhere else.
As Venessa Wong writes in Bloomberg Business Week – that is
about to change at three schools. Starbucks will peddle caffeine from food trucks
at Arizona State University, James Madison University and Coastal Carolina
University.
Why trucks? Starbucks says the trucks can travel around with
students throughout the day, literally following them to meet their caffeine needs
wherever they pop up, according to a Starbucks spokeswoman. Presumably that
means parking outside dorms in the morning and by the quad in the afternoon.
The trucks, operated by food service company Aramark,
will help Starbucks reach a coveted demographic and continue their quest for total brand domination. College-age students love
coffee. More young adults are “turning to coffee, rather than caffeinated
sodas, as their pick-me-up of choice,” reported NPR.
Not just any coffee—they want the fancy stuff.
Just an aside here – does
anybody remember when coffee was THE pick-me-up of choice, before the Diet Coke
craze, and way before the “energy drink” phase? Admittedly, it was in our college days when many of
us began our special relationship with "the bean."
