Emerging from Starbucks, the 'third space' offers customers a place between home and work, and a sense of connection and belonging. While many coffee or new tea brands are following suit today, 'Third Space' can still be said to be synonymous with the brand.
▲ Image from: Unsplash
However, the changing consumption habits and the mushrooming of beverage brands have gradually squeezed Starbucks' 'third space' in recent years. At this juncture, Starbucks has set its sights on another 'third space' - Web3.
At the moment people usually think of many things related to blockchain when they think of Web3, but Brady Brewer, Starbucks' chief marketing officer, said in a conference call not long ago that Starbucks is looking at NFTs (non-homogeneous tokens) that seem to have calmed down from the craze.
▲ Image from: Starbucks
In today's Web3 process, many people simply see NFT as a new form of digital art ownership, so highly speculative transactions are frequent. But what Starbucks sees is how NFT, which can double as an access pass, allows people to own programmable, brandable digital assets.
The 'third space' that Starbucks has been building is a community connection, and third-party connections will also extend to wherever customers experience Starbucks, which happens to fit with the same community-building attributes that NFT has.
▲Image from: Starbucks
Because of this, Starbucks sees no shortage of potential for NFT to create an extended shared ownership model for loyalty, delivering unique experiences, community building, storytelling and customer engagement.
And, this approach could also be a source of value-added business that could benefit many stakeholders in the process, while creating a new type of digital ecosystem that could be used to complement Starbucks' current digital platform offerings.
▲Image from: Starbucks China
Starbucks has not yet determined which blockchain technology it will use, which could be multi-chain or blockchain agnostic (the infrastructure is not running on one specific blockchain, but rather to connect to multiple different blockchain networks).
But for sure, Starbucks will build its own NFT community on the 'environmentally sustainable' Web3 platform, and will start with blockchain and infrastructure-supported collections.
▲Image from: NewsBytes
Starbucks plans to create a series of branded NFT collections, whose ownership will enable community membership and allow access to exclusive experiences and benefits. These collections will be themed from Starbucks' artistic expression, both traditional and newly created, and will include world-class collaborations with other innovators and like-minded brands.
▲ Image from: Unsplash
Later in the year, Starbucks plans to build on the art of coffee and storytelling, starting with the first NFT collection, membership and community. This first collection will form the core digital community and pillar upon which future collections and collaborations will hopefully be built, and all of these programmatic matters will be built on the same new ecosystem.
What Starbucks wants is to be able to create a new global digital community, one defined by collaboration, experience and shared ownership, all centered around coffee, which might then expand into art, music, books, etc., that is, a digital 'third space'.
▲Image from: Twitter
It's worth noting that in line with its plans to move to Web3, Howard Schultz, Starbucks' current interim CEO, says Starbucks wants to find a new CEO who understands Web3 technology. With NFT in mind, there's no telling what kind of 'digital third space' Starbucks will create.