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Starbucks rising in the East
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July 30, 1996: 9:29 a.m. ET
The upscale coffee store becomes the latest overseas retailer to open in Tokyo
From Correspondent Bill Dorman
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TOKYO (CNNfn) -- The street looks like many in Tokyo, but the neighbor is new.
Starbucks coffee is set to open in Ginza on a piece of land twice as expensive as its costliest New York City location.
During recent open houses, the U.S. company has been giving away free samples of its upscale coffee.
So what about when they start charging for it?
"Uh, how much is a cup gonna be? Um, well, we haven't made the announcement yet. But it'll be somewhere between 200 and 300 yen," said Howard Behar, president of Starbucks International.
Uh-oh. So much for cheaper imports.
Coffee shop chains in Japan can already beat those prices. Are these grounds to give up? Some say no.
"Japan doesn't really need a cheaper cup of coffee right now. But it does need a better cup of coffee. And that's what Starbucks could possibly bring in here. So what that would mean is that it will change the focus of competition -- or shift it away from price into quality," said Byron Gill, Senior Analyst, SBC Warburg Japan.
Retail analysts say Japanese consumers are already buying that shift in other areas. Years of recession bargain-hunting are giving way to a selective willingness to pay for quality.
Overseas firms from Tower Records to the Gap and L.L. Bean are capitalizing on that trend. Japanese shoppers will soon see other niche stores, including Office Depot.
Starbucks plans to open more than a dozen other Tokyo stores within a year in hopes that this consumer trend will add up to more than a hill of beans. 
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