Billion-dollar corporation Starbucks knows that hipsters—a vague conceptual demographic here meaning “youngsters who desire a feeling of authenticity in their consumption”—want their coffee to be responsibly grown, environmentally harvested, come from workers making a living wage, and carefully roasted by well-paid employees. Actually, scratch all that: Hipsters just want to drink their coffee out of a mason jar.
The by-now-clichéd mason jar trend, brought to you by Pinterest and offbeat weddings everywhere, has made it all the way to Starbucks, whose savvy marketers know the way to lure customers away from their local, non-chain coffee shops is to offer beverages served out of jars. According to Uproxx, these can be seen in Starbucks in Singapore, where iced macchiatos (a malapropism, as a true macchiato is espresso with a small amount of milk foam; Starbucks’ “macchiatos” are just lattes) are served in mason jars.
Starbucks is also cribbing from a real practice that independent coffee shops have been innovating the past couple of years: aging coffee beans in whiskey barrels. Drinks served with these beans are available in Seattle, the business’ home base. Previous expansions into the “hipster” market include affogato (espresso served over ice cream, now only in Orange County and 18 other stores nationwide) and high-end “Reserve” stores, which forgo Starbucks’ traditional corporate-looking branding to ape the vibe of local coffee shops that reflect the distinct personalities of their owners.
Like other worldwide corporate chains whose annual profits are in the billions, Starbucks tries out new products and changes in localized stores before rolling it out to their locations, of which there are more than 24,000 spread across 72 countries and territories. So you can expect all the fun, “hipster” stuff at a Starbucks near you soon.