The flat white4 is not a magic bullet that can help recover declining coffee sales. The brands are increasingly aware of a new breed of independents and are looking to react. By picking on the flat white they will have made the classic mistake of confusion correlation with causation. Lots of the best shops in the UK offer a flat white (correlation) but they are not successful because they serve flat whites (causation). This is an apparently easy to mistake to make, going by the last broadsheet article about the flat white. Independents know that it is a myriad of things that make them better than the chains, and should be relieved that despite the scrutiny the chains are likely to miss the key factors that give them an advantage.
Branded chains and the flat white
This applies to so much more than just coffee. It’s especially true of the technology industry, where larger companies tend to (often unsuccessfully) ape innovations without really getting at why those innovations were successful to begin with.
