Now imagine these things with a little kick inside.
CREDIT: Getty Images
Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
Starbucks has a new CEO and is desperate to be exciting every day of the week.
This includes at lunchtime and even at night.
It’s not easy. It’s simultaneously whipping out noxious-looking Frappuccinos as it’s trying to get you to pay $10 for coffee that’s been ground by the soft feet of baby baboons.
This might leave its basic bakery products looking (and tasting) tired — as they often are once Friday comes along, I find.
I have an idea. I fancy this is one that Starbucks will leap upon the minute its bean-counters see the financial (and psychological) possibilities.
Welcome to the Espresso Buzz Bagel.
The (surely) geniuses at Einstein Bros. Bagels introduced this marvel just yesterday and it sounds like the very thing to add an even greater kick to a human head (and day).
You’ll already be wondering how much caffeine has been sprinkled into one of these glories. 32 milligrams, which is around a third of the amount you’ll get in an 8-oz. cup of coffee.
Who, though, would want to eat such delicacies? Oh, the very people Starbucks is trying to attract most.
“We have watched the coffee category expand and adapt as millennials converted to coffee drinkers, attracted by the smoother flavor and artisanal characteristics and third- and fourth-wave coffee,” Einstein Bros. Kerry Coyne told Fox News.
Did you know there had been that many waves? Neither did I.
But it’s all about heroics, apparently.
“We knew our culinary team could deliver that same premium, hand-crafted sensory experience with the beloved category hero of espresso in our best-in-class, fresh-baked bagel,” Coyne added.
We all crave a premium, hand-crafted sensory experience, don’t we? And isn’t that what’s been missing at Starbucks of late?
The lines became longer as more and more people ordered online and crammed into stores to pick up their orders, causing a backup for analog customers.
There are now so many Starbucks around that it’s hard to think of them as anything other than premium or handcrafted. And if they’re sensory, well, it’s not always a perfect smell, is it?
I contacted Starbucks to ask whether this is the sort of buzz that the coffee chain might add to its repertoire. I sensed laughter at the other end of the email, before getting the reply that there appear to be no immediate plans.
But you know it’s going to happen. You know that Starbucks needs to create news all the time.
And just imagine how much more quickly customers will zip out of stores after taking a few bites of these bagels with their coffee.
Congestion in your Starbucks? Hype the customers up a little more. Problem solved. You’re welcome.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.