What did Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts do wrong in Sweden?
Last Updated: 26.06.2025 04:05
I’ll start with Starbucks. Starbucks came late to Sweden, not until 2010 did they finally make an attempt, apparently one of their bosses thought that Sweden had to high rents for cafés so they let the market saturate. Not only did we by then have established chains already, both Wayne’s Coffee:
No glaze, things with that sort of sugar glaze in general don’t sell well here.
Had already taken root all over the place. Starbucks locations were bad and often looked way less cozy. They also missed to account for Swedish coffee tastes, Swedes don’t really drink much sweet coffee or coffee drinks like that and you need good pastries, well made sandwiches or something like that to go with it.
As for Dunkin… did you see the pastries in the last picture? Who’d buy Dunkin’? For Fika we have pastries, cinnamon buns and all manner of cookies and shortbread. I’ve tried a Dunkin’, it tastes dry and artificial. We do have some of those American style donuts in Sweden, one of my local shops sell them in the bread section. I don’t know many who’d buy them, but apparently there’s some market for them. Enough to have a food place that focuses on them? Never.
They still remain as a brand though, they sell ready-made iced coffee in cornershops and gas stations.
Apparently they didn’t even fry them in the store, they came shipped frozen and were just thawed and glaced on the spot. Also they apparently had remarkably terrible coffee and couldn’t seem to decide if they were fika or if they were going for extra insanity points and pretend to be food. Just overall a very confused approach.
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This is how I prefer a donut, without a hole and a cream filling.
A lot of Samuel Addams beers on tap as well. I haven’t been in a while but I still buy their BBQ-sauce to have at home.
And Espresso House:
Here’s one I tend to go to when I don’t make my own:
And here’s the thing. American brands can find a spot here. There is a large market for Fast Food brands that know how to integrate themselves properly. McDonalds is huge here, Burger King does well also, most larger towns have a Pizza hut, Subway is suddenly everywhere, I even have a KFC near where I work though to be fair I think we only have a dozen of those here. There are chains that succeed, the one’s that do their homework. We’re getting Five Guys in the beginning of next year.
It also didn’t help that they for some unspeakable reason tried to establish themselves in relatively prestige locations?
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We also have restaurant chains that are technically Swedish but sell themselves as American. I remember spending quite a few evenings at the local Texas Longhorn, a chain of steakhouses focusing on grilled meat, texmex and other percievably Texan food.
I’ve written similar answers to this question before, but I think mainly they failed to do proper market research. They also failed in some other ways.
So for Starbucks to come here as the new kid with underwhelming coffee unsuitable for Swedish tastes, with uncozy enviroments and on top of that having to get into a place where every other block already has either a coffeshop or a konditori already? Maybe if they started 15 years earlier when there was only Konditorier and places didn’t focus so much on good coffee yet, especially if they went to the mid sized cities instead of trying to force their way into Stockholm ass first.
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On top of the chains there is also the Konditorier, places that focus more on the pastries with the coffee often just being regular drip coffee. It’s made up for by having lovely baked goods, sandwiches and often you can also by your bread there to take home.