Couple of months ago I was reading a book on start-ups named "Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki. He was an "evangelist" (a term coined by him) of Macintosh operating system back in 1980's and later went on to become a successful Silicon valley venture capitalist. His book was so riveting due to his unique way of explaining things that I got this tendency to respect his experience and believe in everything he had to teach in his book about start-up companies. As a way of explaining many concepts, he used to so often quote Apple or Starbucks. Since I am from India, I wasn't aware of the fact that Starbucks is such an omnipresent brand around the world; thanks to Cafe Coffee Day. Once I read this book, I started realizing that Starbucks was everywhere (at least in Munich). This might seem strange to the westerners that in India, we can be so oblivious of some of the world famous brands but the fact is, there is an entirely different kind of market in India. It was only in 2011[1] that TATA (Asia's largest coffee plantations company) wanted to bring Starbucks to India in what it envisaged as a strategic alliance.
And I wanted to know what made Starbucks so successful. To me, there are two kinds of coffee - the kind of Bru/Nescafe Sunrise and the rest. And I never had a good feeling about any coffee in Germany being that good - Nescafe Classic, Nescafe Gold, Senseo, everything was pretty much the shit. Later on I found out that it was the composition that made Bru so different from the rest. Nescafe Gold is mostly roasted coffee beans while Bru coffee is roasted coffee beans (70-80%) and chicory (30-20%)[2]. But I am usually an unbeliever of brands though I buy the products from them for the sake of "social status", which is the only additional feature you get from a branded product like Tommy Hilfiger jean-pants as compared to the pants you can buy from one of those stalls on the footpaths in Hyderabad's old basti.
However, I wanted to try this branded coffee once. So I went with a friend who had coffee at Starbucks a few times before. It was in Munich's Hauptbahnhof (the central train station). We had ordered for cheese cakes to go along with "filter coffee" which we chose because it sounded more like "Bru filter coffee" than Cappuccino and Cafe Latte. Each of us paid around 5 Euros (that's approx. 430 Indian rupees (INR) as per the current times of all time low currency exchange rate for INR against USD). In Chennai, you would get a tasty (according to my tongue) Bru Coffee in any roadside tiffin stalls for 5 INR. Anyhow, we had ordered for large filter coffee instead of a small one, to know where those additional 425 INR went. Usually in India, we add lot of milk and a teaspoon full of sugar to coffee. But here, we got pitch black coffee filled almost to the rim of the large paper cup. Without even tasting it, we added as much of condensed milk as we could accommodate in the little room left in the cup, and a bit of sugar.
The first sip I had from the cup, I knew that from now on there's gonna be a third kind of coffee - "the Starbucks filter coffee". It was quite strong and even difficult to drink it to the dregs. But however, we took about half-an-hour to finish it while discussing the great (you can chose to take it with a grain of salt) ideas for a start-up. The actual story of this blog did not start until now.
After we left Starbucks, we were high, indeed very high on coffee. It was around 8 pm on a Sunday. I have never felt this anxious in my life after having a coffee. It gave this feeling of "something is about to happen" but you do not know what it is. We had dinner at my friend's place and I left for my house at around 11 pm. My regular bed time being 11:30 in the night, I could not sleep until 2 am. One thing for sure, it was the Starbucks filter coffee. I was feeling delirious the whole night, cold and anxious. My heart kept beating faster and my breath was swollen. I stay in a 100 year old yet well maintained, spacious flat in an apartment in Munich. Apart from me, there are only two other living things in the apartment. One of them is the 85 year old landlord who owns the house and a black cat named Jacobina. This flat is on the fourth floor and there is an earthquake every time the subway train passes beneath the building. There is this bird view of the main road from my window.
The coffee made me think a lot of things I must do in life. It made me anxious and made me think that something is missing in life - may be some achievement, any achievement and that I have to take an immediate action to do something about it. May be film making, may be starting up a company, didn't exactly know what. Got some weird thoughts that I might jump from the fourth floor (though I didn't intend to) straight on to the road. Was so high that I was feeling insecure, unsafe for no reason - thoughts that someone might mutilate or maim an arm off my body. Or as if someone was conspiring behind the door to attempt a murder. After rolling on bed for about 3 hours, finally fell asleep but never completely. Got up some 5 times the whole night, kept drinking water and peeing. Once I was a bit deep in to sleep and all of a sudden, woke up to notice that I did not have my right arm. Wait! I did not feel my right arm. I turned on the bed lamp with left palm to realize that I had placed my right arm under the pillow and my head over the pillow and the arm went numb. That's it, no big deal. Woke up in the morning at around 9 am. Already late for the university (these are the times when I am doing Master's thesis at TUM, Germany on Computer Vision for Self Driving Cars).
Got up, got ready, got to the college and wrote this blog (well blogging at the uni is a rare thing for me. So don't mistake me for a guy who wastes time at work :P). It is still the worst hangover of all time. Thanks to Starbucks! It was definitely the third kind of coffee.
And I wanted to know what made Starbucks so successful. To me, there are two kinds of coffee - the kind of Bru/Nescafe Sunrise and the rest. And I never had a good feeling about any coffee in Germany being that good - Nescafe Classic, Nescafe Gold, Senseo, everything was pretty much the shit. Later on I found out that it was the composition that made Bru so different from the rest. Nescafe Gold is mostly roasted coffee beans while Bru coffee is roasted coffee beans (70-80%) and chicory (30-20%)[2]. But I am usually an unbeliever of brands though I buy the products from them for the sake of "social status", which is the only additional feature you get from a branded product like Tommy Hilfiger jean-pants as compared to the pants you can buy from one of those stalls on the footpaths in Hyderabad's old basti.
However, I wanted to try this branded coffee once. So I went with a friend who had coffee at Starbucks a few times before. It was in Munich's Hauptbahnhof (the central train station). We had ordered for cheese cakes to go along with "filter coffee" which we chose because it sounded more like "Bru filter coffee" than Cappuccino and Cafe Latte. Each of us paid around 5 Euros (that's approx. 430 Indian rupees (INR) as per the current times of all time low currency exchange rate for INR against USD). In Chennai, you would get a tasty (according to my tongue) Bru Coffee in any roadside tiffin stalls for 5 INR. Anyhow, we had ordered for large filter coffee instead of a small one, to know where those additional 425 INR went. Usually in India, we add lot of milk and a teaspoon full of sugar to coffee. But here, we got pitch black coffee filled almost to the rim of the large paper cup. Without even tasting it, we added as much of condensed milk as we could accommodate in the little room left in the cup, and a bit of sugar.
The first sip I had from the cup, I knew that from now on there's gonna be a third kind of coffee - "the Starbucks filter coffee". It was quite strong and even difficult to drink it to the dregs. But however, we took about half-an-hour to finish it while discussing the great (you can chose to take it with a grain of salt) ideas for a start-up. The actual story of this blog did not start until now.
After we left Starbucks, we were high, indeed very high on coffee. It was around 8 pm on a Sunday. I have never felt this anxious in my life after having a coffee. It gave this feeling of "something is about to happen" but you do not know what it is. We had dinner at my friend's place and I left for my house at around 11 pm. My regular bed time being 11:30 in the night, I could not sleep until 2 am. One thing for sure, it was the Starbucks filter coffee. I was feeling delirious the whole night, cold and anxious. My heart kept beating faster and my breath was swollen. I stay in a 100 year old yet well maintained, spacious flat in an apartment in Munich. Apart from me, there are only two other living things in the apartment. One of them is the 85 year old landlord who owns the house and a black cat named Jacobina. This flat is on the fourth floor and there is an earthquake every time the subway train passes beneath the building. There is this bird view of the main road from my window.
The coffee made me think a lot of things I must do in life. It made me anxious and made me think that something is missing in life - may be some achievement, any achievement and that I have to take an immediate action to do something about it. May be film making, may be starting up a company, didn't exactly know what. Got some weird thoughts that I might jump from the fourth floor (though I didn't intend to) straight on to the road. Was so high that I was feeling insecure, unsafe for no reason - thoughts that someone might mutilate or maim an arm off my body. Or as if someone was conspiring behind the door to attempt a murder. After rolling on bed for about 3 hours, finally fell asleep but never completely. Got up some 5 times the whole night, kept drinking water and peeing. Once I was a bit deep in to sleep and all of a sudden, woke up to notice that I did not have my right arm. Wait! I did not feel my right arm. I turned on the bed lamp with left palm to realize that I had placed my right arm under the pillow and my head over the pillow and the arm went numb. That's it, no big deal. Woke up in the morning at around 9 am. Already late for the university (these are the times when I am doing Master's thesis at TUM, Germany on Computer Vision for Self Driving Cars).
Got up, got ready, got to the college and wrote this blog (well blogging at the uni is a rare thing for me. So don't mistake me for a guy who wastes time at work :P). It is still the worst hangover of all time. Thanks to Starbucks! It was definitely the third kind of coffee.
