Starbucks acquired Teavana!

I found this comment on another thread about the same topic and found it very insightful, so I thought I would repost it here:

“Teavana actually started with a pretty strong drink service element. They got more into the loose tea and started downplaying the beverage service maybe 7-8 years ago. But the quality of their teas has been dropping the last few years, and they’ve been shooting much more for popular flavors rather than good tea. They just brought on their first Marketing VP and started a new customer service initiative.

I’ve been waiting for an acquisition like this for a while. I expect that Teavana will start to carry fewer teas, more of which will be flavors. I’d be surprised if they didn’t come out with a Teavana brand of tea bags and bottled pre-made teas. I’d also be surprised if they didn’t add some coffee stuff to the Teavana stores."

This would be the second Tea company to join the Starbucks borg. (Tzao being the first if I recall correctly)

I’ve been listening to NPR and I don’t know if it was specific news for here, probably, but they were an easy buy because of their poor stock market performance (even with today’s massive gain of 50%, it’s down 45% since they’ve been public) and their less than steady profits. They also said some positions with corporate will probably be cut but nothing into what exactly the plan is or if it’ll just be the same as usual.

I think it’s a great opportunity to expose more people to the amazing beauty of tea. It is our job to educate and inspire our new tea loving friends when they start becoming interested.

It could potentially be a good thing if it means a change in sales tactics or a move towards “tea bar” instead of door-to-door tea salesmen in a box.

I’m yet to have a barista try to sell me an extra large whos-a-do-whatsit-espressolatemocachinoextrafluffycaramelioto when I order a small coffee lol :P

Yeah I am not sure how I feel about this….I guess we will have to wait and see.

Well, Starbucks is opening or has opened their first Tazo shop this week. Maybe it means there will be more of those in the very near future and more types of tea too?

Here’s Tazo’s new website: http://www.tazo.com/

My Facebook wall is flipping out, more than one of them work at Teavana.

From what I was reading, it seems they’re going to keep the Teavana ‘brand’ mostly as-is, and work it like they do the Starbucks and Seattle’s Best coffee brands—Teavana will be the ‘better quality’ brand, grain of salt or not, and Tazo will continue to be the more middle of the road stuff?

It could turn out well, who knows? Starbucks owning it might bring the benefit of having more buying power behind the brand, which means that the quality of the product might increase. Maybe. That’d be a bright side, yes?

It’s a terrible company buying a terrible company. I make nothing of this except they’re going to find out some way to smug up tea…. perhaps an Apple & Toyota Prius endorsed Teavana brand Tazo “triple shotted super green cider latte”. My last visit to a starbucks involved me yelling at the associate because he told me i was wrong for complaining that my sister’s “green tea shouldn’t be boiling”. I honestly can’t wait until their next step of evolution to take place and replace stores with vending machines that squirt out coffee into “venti” sized paper cups.

>___< /starbucks rage

Never thought I’d see SpecialTeas associated with Starbucks! however remotely it may be.
A friend works at Teavana, which is the only reason I really care(hope she keeps her job!), otherwise I’m rather indifferent to the merger.