Starbucks is a coffee shop that sells itself as foreign but in actuality it is a store with foreign influences blending American styles to create the new "coffee bar culture-. Other than lounging around the store, the customer is craving a beverage. Hot or cold, it does not matter. What sells their beverages? Is it the rich foaminess or a sophisticated blend of coffee or tea? Something suggests it is much more complicated than that. Starbucks is a company with domestic roots, marketing itself as a supplier of the opposite. The store sells beverages to customers from nearly every continent of the world. Is that what keeps a constant stream of people coming in and out of the store, so they too can enjoy Rare black and green tea blends with herbal infusions? Have customers forgotten that Starbucks was started in Seattle, a not too foreign city but trendy nevertheless. Not until recently was Seattle seeing an increase in foreign influences, and in step with Seattle culture, Starbucks was ahead of its time. Taking a look at a Starbucks menu, one can find that there are very few words that we would deem American. Beverages with names like Caffe Latte, Caramel Macchiato or Chai Tea; are all words that would seem foreign to a customer who is not familiar with the world of coffee jargon. Starbucks may be doing us a favor by redefining the American beverage preferences and that is exactly what the founder may have planned. Starbucks was first a coffee and espresso shop in Seattle, not particularly exciting, but in 1983 Starbucks sent their marketing director on a trip to Milan. In Milan, the director was so impressed by the espresso bars there that he set the company on a new course, a course that was determined to develop a similar "coffee bar culture- (Starbucks). That culture has taken the nation by storm and is spilling over the borders. Does foreignness sell? According to Thomas Hine it doesn't, Hine claims that "packages can have a hard time selling themselves across borders- (Hine).
