Sunday, November 13, 2005

Starbucks College Green


Another Starbucks posting, I should just rename this blog Dec's Starbucks Rambling. Anyway after months of saying the first Starbucks in Dublin would open soon on College Green (near Trinity College) the Starbucks in Dundrum beat them to it and opened last August. I don't know what the delay with College Green was, maybe they were waiting for the best location to open up. It looks like they got it sorted out and now have 1 College Green. They should be open in a few days. The store is on the corner between the Bank of Ireland and Little Caesars. Nice prime piece of real estate, they should do well.

Update: Newstalk 106 announced this morning that the first Starbucks in Dublin has opened on College Green. Probably a deliberate marketing mistake to ignore the fact that its the second. Its a small mistake but I really wish media outlets would stop regurgitating the press releases they get from marketing departments without bothering to check the truth of the contents.

Oh, and the Irish Times has a story from a couple of weeks ago explaining that the delay was caused by competition for retail outlets in the city center and people objecting that Starbucks would dumb down a historic part of Dublin :-)

However, the coffee chain had originally planned to first launch its flagship store at College Green but was held up by claims the company's presence would "dumb down" an historic part of the city.

Obviously the convience stores, fast food kebab outlets and lapdancing clubs have standards about their neighbourhood.

Update: I went into the new Starbucks on Saturday. Follow the link to that posting.

2 comments:

Siel said...

Will you be taking the challenge there? :)

I'm wondering what the public reaction has been to the new Starbucks openings over there...

Declan said...

I suppose I will wander in and see if the staff know what Fair Trade is, though I think I'll wait until they figure out what coffee is first :-)

The reaction in Ireland has been curiosity mainly. Starbucks is one of those international brands that are all over other countries and never came to Ireland. It became a novelty to go one abroad, and people asked "why are there no starbucks in Ireland?". Dundrum is a little out of the way for most Dubliners so I would guess the majority of people dont know there is a Starbucks in Dublin at all. Once College Green opens everyone will know they are here. Then we'll see what people think.