Starbucks Instant is Coming Soon

First breakfast value meals, and now this: Starbucks has sent out a memo to employees confirming that it’s poised to launch a new line of instant coffee.

The memo, which The Seattle Times got a copy of, was sent out Thursday, after Advertising Age and The Wall Street Journal broke the news about the company’s latest effort to regain its lost luster. Starbucks executives told workers — at least those left after the first round of layoffs this week — that they plan to roll out the new instant product at exclusive events in New York and elsewhere next week. The coffee will arrive in stores Wednesday.

It seems a strange departure for the company, which made its name in Seattle by offering a bold alternative to the bland instant coffees many Americans grew up drinking in the post-War era. I have yet to walk down to my neighborhood Starbucks this morning, but I can only imagine the upturned noses and indignantly dismissive sniffs of my fellow Emerald City coffee snobs as they digest this news.

However, Starbucks says there’s a $17 billion market out there for instant coffee — particularly outside the United States. With its new “Via” product, it aims to steal market share from Nestle’s Nescafe brand, and Kraft’s Sanka.

The company says it’s spent more than 15 years pursuing technology to develop a better instant coffee process. (The Journal reported that the project started after a customer brought some home-brewed instant, which he’d created to drink on camping trips, into Starbucks’ flagship Pike Place Market store; such a quintessentially Seattle story — combining the city’s obsessions with coffee, the outdoors and tech geekery — is almost too good to be true.)

Will it succeed? The company says it will sell Via in packages of three and 12, and at nearly a dollar a cup for the three-pack, some are saying it’s just too expensive for instant coffee, which is perceived as low-quality (largely on the strength of Starbucks’ own efforts over the past couple decades to position itself as a high-end product). Analysts aren’t excited.

However, CEO Howard Schultz is saying the proof will be in the cup, and one early taste tester gives Via a passing grade.

“I don’t have the most sophisticated palette when it comes to coffee, but I think I know the difference between instant and real coffee,” says the Journal’s Janet Adamy. “It didn’t have all the flavor of a regular cup of Starbucks. And the smell wasn’t as robust. But it was a lot better than traditional instant, and it wasn’t a bad replica of regular Starbucks.”