Starbucks Japan has been busy (too much caffeine maybe?). Since they teamed up with Suntory in 2005 to launch their Discoveries series of chilled cup coffee drinks, the drink maker has created a number of hit products for the RTD (ready to drink) market in Japan and East Asia. Their most recent success is a “Kyoto Matcha Latte” flavor, which admittedly has little to do with coffee, but shows how well they’ve adjusted to local markets.
Now in the works is a canned coffee product, Starbucks Doubleshot. Canned coffee is the original RTD in Japan and a staple of any convenience store and vending machine.
The trouble is, canned coffee is typically consumed in one gulp by unpretentious salarymen and blue-collar workers who are not exactly Starbucks’ core clientele. On the other hand it can be served warm and from a vending machine, and the October 21st launch is perfectly timed to coincide with vendors beginning to switch from cold drinks to more hot ones. Either way, the Starbucks brand will give canned coffee a fashionable lift and has the potential to lure new customers.
The product, available in “Con Panna” and “Doppio” versions, will be introduced initially in 10 prefectures around the Kanto area for ¥170 ($1.60), a mark-up of about ¥50 ($0.47) compared to other canned coffee products.
The DoubleShot coffee is an established product from Starbuck’s American line-up, so really nothing new here except they italian-ified the name to sell it better to the Japanese obsession with exotic sounding names.