Israelis let down pro-Zionist Starbucks

The international franchise Starbucks shut down its six branches in Israel. The reason behind this closure, as some youth in the Arab world might want to fantacize, was their boycott in the Arab world.

Arab youth circulated emails with a subject line reading: Boycott actually pays off. The email's body text had a summary about the shut down of the international chain.

As a matter of fact, the closure of Starbucks would be meaningless if it were due to Arab boycott. Arabs called for boycott because of the coffeeshop's pro-Zionist stances.

Therefore, Israelis could have been as well supporting Starbucks for its political position. Yet Starbucks closed in Israel while its branches witness a boom in Arab capitals such as Beirut.

The reasons behind this sudden closure of the American business can be justified on two basis.

First, on cultural grounds, it was not only Starbucks shutting down in Israel for KFC had to face a similar fate.

According to the daily Israeli Haaretz "Starbucks marketing experts and managers like to use the story of the failure of KFC in Israel as an example of the main problem with globalization: The encounter between an international brand (usually American) and the local culture."

The newspaper quoted a manager as saying, "Do you know that they don't slaughter chickens abroad?They attach two electrodes to the chicken, and it dies in a second. In no time."

On the other hand, he continued, "in Israel they slaughter a chicken with a knife, in all directions, they let it thrash around, go into convulsions, rattle, and only after a long time does it die."

Haaretz also quoted him as saying that in a nutshell, this explains the failure of the chicken restaurant chain in Israel: "The skin of the chicken abroad is smooth. The skin of the Israeli chicken after the convulsions, and as a result of the salting, as required by the laws of kashrut [Jewish dietary law] - is wrinkled and scrawny. When you stick a coating on smooth skin it stays on, when you stick it on wrinkled skin it doesn't stay on. The people at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Israel didn't foresee this simple fact."

He added, "Not to mention the fact that the coating on the chicken at KFC restaurants in America is made from pig gelatin and milk, and in Israel it's made of synthetic gelatin and parve [non-dairy] milk powder. The chicken isn't the same chicken and the coating isn't the same coating, so how do they expect the brand to succeed?"

Another reason for the Starbucks closure was based on security grounds. Ever since the start of the second intifada and the consequent suicide bombings, most cafes have been either operating behind locked doors open for identified customers or have employed armed bouncers.

As an international chain, Starbucks invested in neither one of the security measures and consequently its customers felt less safe when visiting it and avoided spending time at the international coffeeshop.

Therefore, the pro-Zionist firm packed it stuff and left back home because of its failing business. However, the "good" news were that its customership in the Arab world was still on the rise.