Logo

What did Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts do wrong in Sweden?

Last Updated: 24.06.2025 01:08

What did Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts do wrong in Sweden?

This is how I prefer a donut, without a hole and a cream filling.

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.

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.

How old is planet Earth? Is it 4.5 billion years old or 6,000 years old?

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.

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.

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.

What specific policy changes could the Labour Party implement to address the housing crisis in the UK, particularly in major cities like London?

They still remain as a brand though, they sell ready-made iced coffee in cornershops and gas stations.

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.

No glaze, things with that sort of sugar glaze in general don’t sell well here.

If Russia needs the resources to fund the war in Ukraine, why doesn’t it throw open its doors to visa free western tourism? Enough people would be interested, & it would start to get some hard currency as €, CHF, £, SEK, $, JPY in the tills at shops.

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.

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:

Here’s one I tend to go to when I don’t make my own:

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

And Espresso House:

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.

Forget Florida — these two unexpected states are the new retirement hot spots - Yahoo Finance

It also didn’t help that they for some unspeakable reason tried to establish themselves in relatively prestige locations?