What was once a backseat plea from my daughter for a McDonald’s Happy Meal has morphed into a passenger-side appeal for a Starbucks Strawberries & Cream Frappuccino, apparently the must-have drink of the moment. Chances are, if you’re a fellow parent of a tween or teen, you’ve found yourself facing similar pleas in recent times. The American-based coffee chain many of us Millennials once scoffed at for trying to make it in our unashamedly coffee-snobbish country is now the epitome of cool among our kids.
After decades of struggling to cut through, Starbucks is now booming in Australia thanks to tweens. Credit: Bloomberg On TikTok, thousands of videos about the best flavour combinations and limited edition products – like the Halloween-themed pumpkin spiced latte – have amassed millions of views from around the world, particularly in Australia and especially among teens and tweens. According to my 12-year-old, her appreciation for their sickly sweet iced beverages is because they are “bussin” (translation: delicious), and worth every cent of their slightly exorbitant price tags (between $5 and $11).
If you’re as dedicated as some youngsters in Perth, where Starbucks opened its first store last month, the drinks are even worth lining up for at 3am. With this virality has come something many of us assumed Starbucks would never manage to achieve in Australia – success. Loading Last month, the company reported a “pronounced traffic decline” for the 2023-24 fi.