A Book Review

The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph A. Michelli

I just started reading “The Starbucks Experience” and believe this book will be extremely beneficial for church planters and church leaders to learn some valuable insights from.  One of the aspects that they discuss is the type of real community that Starbucks and its team has created – not just for eachother but for us as well.  As I read the first couple of chapters I immediately thought about how many churches have never been able to build a genuine community and how so many people have been disconnected from “church”.  Here is a quote from Howard Schultz; pg.12:

“The success of Starbucks demonstrates that we have built an emotional connection with our customers. We have a competitive advantage over classic brands in that every day we touch and interact with our customers directly.  Our product is not sitting on a supermarket shelf like a can of soda.  Our people have done a wonderful job of knowing your drink, your name, and your kids’ names”.

Starbucks knows that branding is ALL about the connection!  Is your church connecting with your audience?  Do you touch and interact with people daily?  Are you sitting in the church building or going into the community?  There are a lot of applications here and maybe we should take a page (or two) from this book and learn from Starbucks so that we can build a better church “experience” for the people we want to reach.