Over my morning coffee (a grande nonfat latte), I read the news this week that a battle is brewing between Starbucks and McDonald's. According to the story, McDonald's is planning to capitalize on the public's willingness to pay $4 for a cup of coffee by hiring baristas and dropping espresso machines in 14,000 of their fast-food outlets. Meanwhile, Starbucks, with business lagging, is fighting back with an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy, by offering heated breakfast sandwiches and adding drive-thru windows to some of their locations.
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I've always thought of these two chains as polar opposites — one designed as a sophisticated faux living room where customers could get a decent coffee drink and read their newspapers; the other, a riot of plastic-and-vinyl booths and bright fluorescent lighting where meals are counted in billions served. I wondered if it was really possible for these two worlds to collide. If McDonald's built its own version of a grande nonfat latte, would Starbucks customers come?
To determine whether Starbucks and McDonald's customers are the same or different species, I turned to Hitwise data. With the assumption that I'd glean some information about each camp's patronage by investigating who visited the fast-food chains' respective websites, I compared their demographics. Here's what I found. Visitors to Starbucks.com skew female: Starbucks' website has 8.3% more female visitors than does the McDonald's site. While McDonalds.com visitors cluster in the 18-to-34 age range, Starbucks owns the 35-to-44-year-old group. There's also a clear income gap between the two: McDon ...