A Research Outline on the Transformation of the Coffee Industry in the United States of America and the Role of Starbucks in It Essay

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. Abraham Lincoln No one knows when, how or even why coffee was discovered and first domesticated into an agricultural product. However, coffee has been around for over half a millennia, before Europeans even discovered the Americas (NCA n.p.). Though the beverage has been around the centuries, it is only in the past few decades that the coffee industry in the United States has been transformed from a goods-related supply chain to a service-oriented empire. And there is arguably one company responsible for this transformation Starbucks. Much like McDonalds introduced the concept of the fast food experience, Starbucks transformed coffee from just another consumer good to an industry that plays on human emotion, community, and daily life. This research paper aims at addressing the specifics of how, when and why Starbucks played an integral part of the transition of the coffee industry in the United States in the past few decades. The three main questions to be addressed, then, are 1) how has the coffee industry changed since the 1970s, 2) what role has Starbucks played in this transformation, and 3) how is the coffee industry likely to change in the future?This is a difficult research question to address form an objective standpoint, since the answers to the questions above depend largely on ones perspective. However, the paper will utilize several key resources to inform its subsequent discussion. First, William Roseberry addresses the shift in the coffee industry and the creation of coffee culture in his 1996 article discussing the rise of yuppie coffees and the reimagination of class in the United States (762). Second, Michael D. Smith wrote an article the same year examination not only the consumption and production of coffee, but how Starbucks plays into a new political economy of coffee production. The scholar combines cultural studies with consumption studies to create a...

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