March 20, 2015
Ten Things Churches Can Learn From Starbucks
Hint: It’s not about making coffee.
Churches could learn a few things from Starbucks…
Starbucks is one of those places that, even if you don’t go there, you know it’s the place to go.
It’s the number one coffee shop in the United States, maybe even in the world. It’s almost like Starbucks was selling something addictive…
They are, of course. Starbucks sells coffee, which contains the drug caffeine. But as far as we know, Starbucks coffee contains no more of the drug than the coffee sold at it’s two biggest coffee competitors, McDonalds or Dunkin’ Donuts. Starbucks doesn’t even sell better coffee, regularly coming in #3 behind McD and DD in blind taste tests.
It’s not about advertising, either. Starbucks hardly does any, compared to its competitors. You won’t find the Starbucks mermaid popping up on your TV next to the words “I’m lovin’ it.” Nor will you find a single billboard proclaiming, “America runs on Starbucks.”
So if it’s not about better coffee, stronger caffeine, or better advertising, what is it? Why are so many people addicted to Starbucks? If you ask the Starbucks CEO, he’ll tell you. It’s not about making better coffee but about the Starbuck’s experience. Starbucks knows how to create an experience and provide a sense of community that fill a deep-down need.
So let’s ask the real question, “Why are so many people addicted to the Starbuck’s experience?”
Here are ten reasons:1
Reason #1: Starbucks’ mission (the “why”) is greater than their product (the “what”). Starbucks’ mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Inspiring and nurturing human spirit is so much greater of a mission than selling people coffee in neighborhood stores. It is transcendent and transformational. It aspires to make a difference in the world. People want to be part of something greater than themselves.
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. For a church to be vital and effective, its vision and mission also must be greater than its product. What is your church’s product (what it does every Sunday)? How is that different from your church’s vision (what it aspires to be) and mission (why it exists)? In what ways are the latter greater from the former?
Reason #2: Starbucks is focused on a definable market. Knowing that one size does not fit all, Starbucks focuses their attention on a particular segment of the market. They don’t exclude other portions of the market from coming. Rather, they realize that while a vision and mission can be transcendent and transformative, a product and its market must be finite and focused.
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. God’s love may be infinite but churches’ human and fiscal resources are not. Effectiveness requires focus. Churches must make choices about which segments require their primary focus. Has your church leadership define its primary target group(s)? How would you describe them?
Reason 3: Starbucks studies its market(s). Starbucks does a lot of market research. They try to determine not only what the people in their chosen market wants (what they are consciously looking to buy), but also on what they are likely to need to feel comfortable and at ease (needs of which they may not even be consciously aware).
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. Churches must understand their target markets at a similar depth, not only determining the wants they will have when they visit the first time, but also discerning their deepest needs, which when met will plant in them a desire to stay. Do you know the wants and needs of the people in your surrounding community? How would you describe their wants? How would you describe their needs?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. People may come to a church for great worship, but unless the church provides them with great community – a deep sense of connectedness with God and each other – they may not stay, and they will never become truly committed. How does your church strike this balance? How do you provide for people’s wants? How do you address people’s needs?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. Churches need to put more attention and intentionality into the experience people have when they visit, yet most churches leave much of that experience to chance. It’s not a question of whether people will have an experience in your church, but whether the experience they receive at your hands is the kind of experience you want them to have. Strongly liturgical faith traditions, like my own Episcopal Church, have the capability to provide an intentional, all-encompassing experience, but we don’t provide it as often as we could, because sometimes we just lack sufficient intentionality. How much of the experience that your church provides attendees is intentional? How much “just happens?” What aspects the experience work well? What needs to be added or improved?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. Churches used to provide that “third space,” where diverse people from neighborhoods gathered in community as part of their daily routines. But now, more often than not, they stand apart from the communities they are called to serve. What is your church’s relationship to its neighborhood? Does it serve the community? When it serves the community, does it do ministry to the community, or does it do ministry with the community? How could the relationship change for the better?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. For places that are supposed to be all about welcoming community, churches don’t always do the best or most intentional job of creating it. Does your church intentionally work at creating a welcoming sense of community from the start? Do your greeters/ushers like their jobs? Are they selected because they demonstrated the gift of hospitality? Or because there was a job to be done and a warm body? Do your greeters open the door or wait for the visitor? Do they introduce themselves and ask visitors’ names? Do they offer to make each visitor a nametag? Do your members actually wear their nametags? Do all members know that they are in the business of welcome? Do church leaders and members make time to talk with newcomers about their needs and gifts?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. In creating an experience for their attendees, churches have to find a similar balance between parts of the experience that can vary for the sake of variety, and a core experience that remains relatively unchanging. What are parts your church’s experience are allowed to change? What parts are so core to the experience that they seldom if ever allow to change?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. We Churches got this one. If anything, however, our names for things – Eucharist, Host, and Intinction – are perhaps even more obscure than Grande, Venti, and Trenta. But considering the fact that Starbucks can turn even buying a cup of coffee into a meaningful rite, maybe we in the Church ought to find ways build liturgy into more of everyday life’s activities, not less. What new rites and rituals has your church developed in response to the needs of its people?
- Lessons & Questions for Churches. When I occasionally started to feel trapped or distracted in my office at the church, I would often go to Starbucks to do some work. Somehow being surrounded by seemingly creative people busy at be creative made me feel more creative, too. But because I generally was wearing my clerical collar, I was also pleasantly surprised by the not infrequent opportunities I had to talk with people about deep and important things about life. Recently, I gave up my office at church to make another classroom for our growing Sunday school, and now I work almost exclusively out of a local Starbucks (unless it involves a meeting over a meal). I do wonder, though, how could we make church more of a place that people could go to achieve? Thoughts anyone?
What if Starbucks marketed more like churches? Click here to find out.
1 Most of these 10 reasons were adapted from information obtained from the Starbucks official website or from online forums about Starbucks.
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