This Joe's for you?

Three big restaurant chains are revving up efforts to take on Starbucks, which has struck it rich by serving expensive coffee to people looking for a little bit of daily luxury. But the chains — Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's and Burger King — are not going after the Starbucks coffee snob; they're going after the average Joe. Call it class war in a coffee cup. Burger King customers buying the new BK Joe coffee "don't want it to be complicated, like a chai half-decaf whatever," said Denny Marie Post, the senior vice president and "chief concept officer" for Burger King, a unit of Texas Pacific. "Our customer doesn't have that kind of money, frankly, and doesn't have that kind of profile. They just want it to be straightforward. This is not frou-frou coffee." Since McDonald's began promoting its premium coffee several months ago, the company says, its coffee sales have increased at a double-digit rate. The chain has almost "defied gravity," said Bob Goldin, the executive vice president of Technomic, a restaurant consulting company in Chicago. "You would have thought that the bubble would have burst by now, but they've continued to find ways to make themselves relevant to their consumers." "It's such a big business, and there's so much room," Mr. Goldin said. "Starbucks does have a different, more loyalist customer. You think of the Starbucks customer as Gen X, more affluent, more urban. I think Dunkin' has a little bit more of a blue-collar type of appeal, but that is starting to change." Coffee is the easiest way to figure out who is a member of your "tribe," said Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the advertising agency JWT. It may be that Dunkin's average-guy ad campaign is catching on, Ms. Salzman said. "I've noticed a real change of people carrying Dunkin' Donuts products proudly, like they're driving an average sedan. It's like a billboard, a cup that says 'I don't care.' "


Seo Young