A coffee chain looking for a reliable marketing move can always add another cold-brew drink to its menu.
With the iced coffee and cold-brew market projected to grow by almost a factor of 6, to more than $944 million in 2025 from $166 million in 2017, demand is raging.
Cold brew is the drink of the 2020s, just as iced coffee harks back to the 1990s and decades before. It's particularly popular with younger consumers, with recent stats showing that those ages 18 to 39 are almost ready twice as likely to rate it as an “excellent” drink than those who are past 40.
"People tend to confuse iced coffees with a cold brew," TheStreet's editors wrote in a comparative rating in April.
"While the former is simply any coffee that is served on the rocks, cold brews are caffeinated drinks that are a result of a sheer investment of time.
"You steep coffee beans in water and then filter out a concentrate that is then mixed with milk or water. Now that you have a coffee, you can serve it on the rocks, and voila, iced coffee."
One More Cold Brew Is Coming To Starbucks
To tap into this demand, Starbucks (SBUX) has added another cold-brew drink to its summer menu — this time, with a creamy chocolate foam top.
The Chocolate Cream Cold Brew is a cold brew with chocolate cream cold foam topping and sweetened vanilla syrup.
Starbucks is marketing it as a "light, sweet and silky" drink meant to bring back those "nostalgic summer moments," Rosalyn Batingan of Starbucks's beverage development team said in a news release.
TheStreet
"When creating this beverage, we wanted to bring our customers a drink that would transport them back to their favorite summer memories with each sip."
Prices range from $5.25 and $5.45 in different parts of the U.S. Along with the new drink, Starbucks is also adding the Lime-Frosted Coconut Bar to its pastry menu.
"The classic combination of coffee and notes of chocolate, along with the malt flavor in the chocolate cream cold foam, are reminiscent of a chocolate malted milkshake, or that last bit of melted chocolate ice cream on a warm summer day, to recreate the sweet, creamy flavor of summers past," Batingan said.
Starbucks Is All About Iced Drinks
While Starbucks started out as a plain old coffee shop out of Seattle, it truly built its brand through signature iced drinks like Frappuccinos.
The cold-brew craze has only helped cement Starbucks's image as the place for cold coffee drinks.
On its most recent earnings call, Interim Chief Executive Howard Schultz said that iced drinks make up "almost 80% of the business." That number was 50% just a few years ago
In the U.S., Starbucks currently has five other cold brews on its menus. These include Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew and Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew.
While the coffee giant recently reported a net sales increase of 14.5% to $7.64 billion, Starbucks has been struggling with a number of different issues: competitors that are quickly gathering steam, the rise of unions at its stores and, in general, stagnation as a brand that has been around for more than 50 years. Over the past year, Starbucks shares have fallen more than a third.
