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Ask HN: Why hasn’t there been a “Starbucks for Chai” in the US?
On a recent trip to India, I had about 3-4 cups of chai a day from street vendors. I don’t even usually drink chai in the states but the street chai in India is addicting. The best part is it’s more a mild caffeine hit than coffee, so spacing out 3 cups a day works well.
It also tastes just as good if not better than a Starbucks drink if you get masala chai. It has to be like the street vendors though, not the Americanized version you can already by in the stores.
The unit economics for chai are much better than coffee. It can be sold at a lower price point, better margins, and higher frequency. Imagine a store you pop in an out of in 1 min to get your morning cup and spend $2 max.
The US doesn’t have a huge tea culture, so I could see why chai hasn’t naturally taken off. However, I would argue that places like Starbucks are less so satisfying the need for coffee and more so satisfying the need of caffeinated sugary drinks.
Why can’t chai satisfy that need?
- eimrine 3y agoWhat is the ratio of tea leaves to water in India? Is this cup disposable?
- rifath 3y agoThe cup can be disposable just like a coffee cup can be. I think whatever the tea leaf ratio, if you bought all the ingredients and just made it at home, each cup should cost less than $1 to make and that would be if you’re not trying to optimize the unit economics.
- eimrine 3y agoI want to know the ratio of leaves in a country with such a powerful tea/chai culture. In my country it is hard to find where to buy some tea and is impossible to buy a cup of robust tea with no paper bags.
- quantified 3y agoMight happen someday. Fads are unpredictable. But drinks can be considered "weird" or "foreign" just like foods can. Yes, coffee is foreign, but not alien. Btw: "The best part is it’s more a mild caffeine hit than coffee"... for a lot of Starbucks patrons, that's why not.
- rifath 3y agoYeah the last point makes sense. I wonder what the average Starbucks customer thinks. In my mind they’re just there for the routine and dose of a sugary drink, but I could be wrong there. That’s what I go to Starbucks for.
- cratermoon 3y agoFor the same reason there's no Uber for rikshaws or McDonalds for bushmeat.
- rifath 3y agoI think those are functionally not needed because there are better options. I think you’re implying that Chai is a much more inferior version of coffee and therefore no one would want it but that wouldn’t explain why Chai shops are already a thing and there is a consumerization movement happening in the UK. It just hasn’t really hit the US.
- cratermoon 3y agoIt's not because they are inferior products, it's because the US is not a tea-drinking country. Before Starbucks came along Americans already drank oceans of coffee. Folgers, Maxwell House, Tasters Choice, and more. UK is a tea-drinking country.
- scantis 3y agoI think chai is bread in India. I was in the outskirts of Varanasi over a decade ago, no ATM was working for me and I had no cent to my name. I had a nice prepaid cap driver, who didn't seem bothered by this and brought me to a place where they made small clay pots from the dirt, cured them over fire and filled it with chai coming from a big iron pot. One guy made the pots, another cured them, one was filling the cured cups and another skimmed solids from the top of the pot into another container. The price was 10 rupees and the driver paid and welcomed me to India. Basically just 3 sustaining sips. I was baffled by it. There was long cue of people waiting for their chai, he told me it was a meal for those people. Doesn't seem sanitary but it was fine and is a drink I still have dreams about. It is not just milk boiled with the spices that are at hand and some tea leaves. It is real sustinace for a lot of people far below the poverty line. A thick and savory muddy looking liquid, rich in calories and it makes shitty situations somehow fine. You can not quite have it like that in the west, the combination of aniseed and other spices even create tiny amounts of amphetamines, so it packs a little more punch then just caffeine. It's never quite as thick or flavourful in the west and probably contains no further stimulants except caffeine. So it will be much more boring here and probably way overpriced. I tried to make it myself, but it was never any good. Even in India some chai is worse then the other. The dirt cheap ones people hand out in trains can be way better then the ones in a 4 star hotel.
- rifath 3y agoI agree it’s great. I don’t exactly see why it can’t be made in the West like that. I just don’t know if anyone’s really tried (would love to understand if someone has)
- scantis 3y agoIt will be a bit difficult, you may have to avoid the natural amphetamines and some of the stimulants. The German gingerbread contained them aswell, all store bought gingerbread had to change the classical recipe. There are lots of instant chai available and you can order chai in some places, but mostly it's heavy on the cinnamon and tastes watered down. I had a similar thing with vietnamese coffee. It's a different type of roast and the beans are a bit fatty. You drink it cold with condensed milk. I can't get these beans here, as they are import restricted, due to them being to wet. Which is an older storage law, to avoid spoiling, you can't get around easily. Maybe it is something like that, that is keeping us from getting the good stuff here.
- chewz 3y agoYou can also ask why there is no espresso culture in US like in Italy... Italian espresso is much like Indian chai... Quick shot of caffeine ready in seconds and relatively cheap and ubiquitous... Howard Schultz claimed in his book that he intended to re-create Italian espresso bar in US with Starbucks... He failed in my opinion as Starbucks is nothing like coffee bar... But I guess the culture difference explains that... And also you can't upsell much on plain espresso or chai.. Starbucks and American type coffee shops in general are very much sweet shops with sugary coffee-based deserts. Different story... but better profit margins...