Starbucks launches instant coffee Via nationwide

Almost seven months after unveiling its new instant coffee in Seattle and Chicago, Starbucks is taking it national — and to Canada — today.

The widespread launch will be accompanied by a TV campaign and the availability of the single-serve packets at Starbucks in the U.S. and Canada, Costco Wholesale, Target and REI, and on United Airlines. Grocery stores will begin to carry it next year.

Starbucks is promoting a giveaway from Friday to Monday, when customers comparing brewed coffee to Via will get a free cup of brewed coffee and $1 toward a Via purchase.

The hubbub is warranted for a product that taps into the $20 billion instant-coffee market, said CEO Howard Schultz.

"We're sitting on perhaps the biggest opportunity our company has ever had," he enthused during a conference call with reporters. Schultz declined to say how much Starbucks is spending on the ad campaign but called it "the biggest investment that we've made in a national launch."

Starbucks began national advertising for the first time earlier this year, one of many strategic shifts to address shrinking profits and competition and advertising attacks from McDonald's and others.

Via, which comes in two flavors and costs $2.95 for a three-pack or $9.95 for a dozen, is also sold in London. Schultz would not comment on plans for a European rollout.

Sales have exceeded the company's expectations in all three test markets — espresso-savvy Seattle, brewed-coffee-loving Chicago and instant-coffee-focused London — Schultz said, but he did not give figures.

He said Via's promise reminds him of Starbucks in its early days, when espresso drinks changed the way brewed-coffee drinkers thought about coffee.

Now, he said, Starbucks could change how people see instant coffee.

The Seattle coffee company has been working on an instant-coffee formula for 20 years, since it hired its first head of research and development, Don Valencia, for whom Via is named. Valencia died in 2007.

Via costs more than other instant coffees, but Schultz said the single servings mean it won't be thrown away or grow stale.

He thinks people won't be able to tell the difference between Via and brewed coffee, which to him means it is not so much an expensive instant coffee as a convenient and affordable alternative to drip coffee.

"We're not competing with instant coffee," Schultz said.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com