New York (CNN) Starbucks wants you to try olive oil coffee. Really.
The coffee chain is launching a new line of drinks with extra virgin olive oil. To be clear, the drinks are not simply flavored with olive oil, nor do they have even a hint of it. Each one is really made with a spoonful of oil, adding 120 calories to the total. With some drinks you can see a slippery shimmer of oil in the cup and you don’t even have to squint.
Three olive oil drinks are available in Starbucks coffee shops in Italy starting this week. Each includes Oleato, the Starbucks word for the new line, in its name.
There’s an Oleato Latte with oat milk and olive oil, an Oleato Ice Shake Espresso with oat milk, hazelnut flavor and olive oil, and the Oleato Golden Foam Cold Brew, which is made with a version of Starbucks’ sweet milk froth infused with two shots of olive oil. Versions of these beverages will arrive in Southern California this spring, with more details on US launch to follow. They will be launched in other markets in the UK, Middle East and Japan this year.
Starbucks Oleato drinks are made with extra virgin olive oil.
Like other large chains, Starbucks often adjusts its menu by launching or re-introducing seasonally limited items new ingredients like oat milk. But this launch is much bigger, Starbucks chief marketing officer Brady Brewer told CNN.
“It’s one of the biggest launches we’ve had in decades,” he noted. “Rather than a flavor or a product, it’s really a platform,” he said, meaning customers can use olive oil to customize some drinks.
The company is betting that people will hear about the brew and try it because they want to know how it tastes. And maybe because they’ve heard that extra virgin olive oil has health benefits.
Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz is interviewed by Poppy Harlow at Asaro Farm in Sicily.
Starbucks is on its feet with Oleato. Adding fat to coffee is not new. You can make it the old fashioned way with cream or milk or even butter. Olive oil coffee recipes are available online.
But consumers certainly aren’t asking for olive oil coffee. And Starbucks is launching the line at a time when supply chains are fragile, consumers are watching their budgets, and baristas, some of whom are so frustrated with the company that they’re joining a union, are already struggling with complicated drink orders have.
Why is Starbucks launching this big new line? Two words: Howard Schultz.
The circle closes
Last year, Schultz met olive oil producer Tommaso Asaro, who introduced him to the practice of consuming a tablespoon of olive oil every day. Schultz learned more about the practice during a visit to Sicily this summer, and then picked up the habit himself. He wondered if he could combine it with his daily coffee routine.
“When we got together and started doing this ritual, I said yes [Asaro]I know you think I’m going crazy, but have you ever considered infusing a tablespoon of olive oil with Starbucks coffee?” Schultz, currently acting Starbucks CEO, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “He thought it was a bit strange.” Asaro is the chairman of United Olive Oil, through which Starbucks gets its olive oil.
Howard Schultz and Tommaso Asaro, chairman of United Olive Oil, which makes the Partanna olive oil that Starbucks uses for Oleato.
Schultz is not new to making business decisions based on visits to Italy.
Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982, 11 years after the first Starbucks location opened its doors (the original Starbucks sold whole coffee beans). In 1982, Starbucks was still a tiny operation with a total of four stores. Schultz, who had come on board as director of operations and marketing, visited Milan in 1983 and fell in love with the city’s café culture. The rest, he says, is history.
“My Starbucks journey will conclude when I return to Milan later this month to introduce something much bigger than any new promotion or drink,” Schultz said during an analyst call in February, teasing the new line.
In 1983, Howard Schultz was inspired by Milan. Last year he took notes from Sicily, where olive oil is produced. Partanna, pictured, is a town in Sicily near Asaro Farm. It is the namesake for the oil used in Oleato.
Speaking to CNN’s Harlow, he predicted the new platform will “transform the coffee industry” and be “a very profitable new addition to the company.”
It’s one thing to play with the idea of adding olive oil to coffee on a whim and another to come up with a line of drinks that can attract customers around the world.
To do this, Schultz turned to his Starbucks team in Seattle, where the coffee chain is headquartered. There they had to find out how to make olive oil coffee tasty.
A unique case
Typically, Starbucks doesn’t develop new beverages based on CEO ideas.
“This is a pretty unique case,” Brewer told CNN. But, he noted, “we have ideas that come from everywhere.”
Starbucks’ beverage team developed about 12 options, which narrowed down to the three now available in Starbucks’ Italian cafes. (The Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Milan serves five oleato drinks, including a deconstructed espresso drink, an iced cortado, and an espresso martini, all of which contain olive oil).
Starbucks opened its first Italian location, The Roastery, in 2018, a decision that raised eyebrows from locals. But five years later it has managed to expand within the country. For the launch of Oleato, Schultz is back in Italy to see how the Italians react. “What if you don’t like it?” asked Harlow. In that case, “I’m not coming back to Seattle,” Schultz quipped.
A barista pours extra virgin olive oil into a cold passion fruit foam before mixing in the espresso.
In recent years, beverage manufacturers have included ingredients such as turmeric or CBD in their recipes that customers consider healthy or offer certain benefits, such as: B. the support of sleep. Starbucks doesn’t make any health claims about oleato, but hopes people will come to see it as a healthy choice through their own research.
And those extra 120 calories? “We didn’t see that as an obstacle,” Brewer said. “We’re not too worried about that.”
Brewer and Schultz also dismissed some of the other challenges.
And as for the likelihood of people shelling out extra money for the oil, Brewer said customers see Starbucks as an “affordable luxury.” In the last three months of 2022, sales at Starbucks stores open 13 months or more grew 5% globally, despite higher prices.
From Brewer and Schultz’s point of view, the only risk is that the drinks do not fulfill the taste.
The proof, they say, is in the cup.
The taste test
In New York, this reporter got to taste four Oleato drinks: the hot oatmilk latte, the golden foamy cold brew, the oatmilk and hazelnut espresso shaken with ice, and an iced cortado as served at the Milan roastery.
I could see the oil in the cold drinks – it gave the cold froth a pale green tint and appeared as a thin, bubbling layer on the shaken espresso and cortado.
I liked them all on the first sip. For me, the strongest olive oil flavor was the golden foam on the cold brew – nutty and sweet and surprising, as promised. I could perceive it more subtly with the Cortado and the espresso. I couldn’t taste it at all in the hot latte.
A cold brew, heavy on the olive oil.
But after a few sips of each, it felt like too much.
I usually drink regular coffee with a plant-based milk, preferably unsweetened. So the sweet cold drinks – especially the shaken espresso and the cortado – felt like a wonderful treat. They would have been great without the olive oil which looked like an unnecessary flourish.
Starbucks describes the drinks as rich and velvety thanks to the oil. But to me, they just felt down. And for a while after trying the drinks I could feel the oil on my lips.
As it turns out, I prefer my olive oil to dinner. Starbucks will have to wait and see if most people disagree.