Facebook is worth more than Starbucks! So?

by Chee Leng
(Singapore)

Starbucks has 12 440 outlets according to Wikipedia and this year they sold more than 10 Millions Via coffee iN Japan alone, has thousands of supermarkets selling their Via coffee.

Starbucks is big, and is selling lots of coffee, no doubt about that. And to be fair they are worth alot - $19.2 Billion.

And they are staffed by at least 10 thousands employees? If one outlet has just 5 employees, they would have at least close to 60 000 employees.

But, they are less valuable according to financial times than Facebook. The Social Site that lets you build kitchen empire via cafeworld, selling virtual coffee.

Though they are a private company, there are some folks selling and buying their stakes and the valuation of this company is a whopping $33 billion dollars!

And this is a relatively small company -1500 employees.

In my previous article about McD and Starbucks, some readers mentioned that both McD and Starbucks coffee are really not up to par. It might be the case, but McD has the network thus sells loads of coffee.

For Starbucks, it is always the Starbucks experience, I do not see their positioning as great coffee but great ambiance.

People like to hang around more than go for a superb coffee.

And that point was again proven in Facebook, a site that is a platform for people to connect that has less than a decade history but is worth Billions...

We are social animals, personally I think good coffee is important, but equally more important is an outlet with a story that would draw people to you.

I have seen really plain coffee being sold in games cafe, comic cafes that does roaring business. Of course, the draw is not the coffee, but the "theme" they have, and the reason that they have given for people to hang at their outlet.

So, what is your thought? Is coffee more important than the "experience" of the cafe?