One problem with the frappuccino is that it’s easy to copy. The internet is full of recipes: ice cubes, espresso, milk, powdered sugar and a syrup of your choice in the blender, whipped cream and more syrup on top, done. A barista, as the employees in the Starbucks coffee shops are called, needs an average of 87 seconds for the 16 steps to the iced coffee.
Doesn’t sound that difficult, thought an Indian coffee shop and simply copied the Frappuccino. Starbucks has been at odds with LOL Cafe from Jaipur, India, since 2018. The coffee shop sold a beverage called “Brownie Chips Frappuccino” without obtaining a trademark license from Starbucks. Starbucks operates in India 268 branches in 26 cities in a joint venture with the Indian company Tata Consumer Products.
Now the High Court in Delhi Starbucks right. “Defendant’s acquisition of the ‘Frappuccino’ brand is dishonest and intended to deceive an unwary consumer,” Judge Navin Chawla ruled. “It constitutes an infringement of the plaintiff’s trademark and also results in the defendant’s goods being passed off as plaintiff’s.” LOL Cafe has to rebrand the drink, reprogram the electronic menus, hand out all Frappuccino promotional materials, and bear the litigation costs.
But LOL Cafe is far from the only coffee shop copying Starbucks and against which Starbucks lawyers are taking action. In India, a few years ago, Sardarbuksh Coffee had to change its name to Sardar-Ji-Bakhsh Coffee & Co because the name otherwise sounded too much like Starbucks. In 2016, Starbucks won a court case because a small US company produced a Frappuccino cup-shaped cannabis bong with a Starbucks-like logo and the Dabuccino name. And in Malta Earlier this year, the Copycat chain Strabuono Coffee International Limited lost to Starbucks, whose logo was very similar to that of the US group and sold “Strapuccinos”.
Something similar just happened in Russia – albeit with state approval. After the attack on Ukraine, Starbucks closed around 130 branches in the country, and a few months later Russian entrepreneurs opened their own coffee chain. Instead of Starbucks, it’s called Stars. The character on the logo looks almost exactly like the Starbucks mermaid, but instead of wearing a star-studded crown, she wears a traditional Russian star-studded headdress.
There are 33 different types of Frappuccino in the United States
The Frappuccino is world famous, Starbucks sells it in 35,711 stores in 80 countries. He has his own Wikipedia entry in 19 different languages. And he’s important to Starbucks. The company now sells more cold drinks than hot drinks all year round – the Frappuccino is the cold drink star.
Innovations are not easy when the core product is coffee drinks that everyone knows and can easily imitate. At the moment, innovation at the Seattle chain means, among other things, developing new versions of the Frappuccino and other successful drinks. line extension that’s what they call it in marketing parlance. There are currently 33 different Frappuccino flavors in the US, ranging from the Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino® (470 calories) to the Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Crème Frappuccino® (320 calories) or the grass-green Matcha Crème Frappuccino® (420 calories).
But the group is also working on another inventions. One of the most important is “a more efficient cup of coffee,” he recently announced, presenting a new coffee maker, the Clover Vertica™. With the Clover Vertica™ it only takes 36 seconds and 13 steps to make a Grande Mocha Frappuccino®.