There's already a Starbucks on nearly every street corner in L.A., but starting this week, a Starbucks frappuccino truck might be parked on your street corner, too. The brightly-colored truck, which looks like something Urban Outfitters might've designed, made its debut last month in San Diego and hits L.A.'s most visible tourist destinations – the Hollywood Bowl, Venice Boardwalk and Dodger Stadium – tonight through next Sunday.
The Frappuccino Truck Tour, as its billed, is clearly a campaign aimed at Millennials who'd much rather buy from food trucks and local market vendors than from a corporate brick-and-mortar storefront. Hot on the heels of the Roy Choi-advised food truck movie, Chef, and Food Network's Great Food Truck Race reality show, Starbucks is attempting to camouflage its corporate ubiquity by debuting a hand-painted gas-guzzler. For Starbucks, jumping on the foodie bandwagon now literally just means launching a food truck. ]
Starbucks practically invented the coffee drive-thru, but drive-thru's conjure up images of busy soccer parents in mini-vans. Food trucks, on the other hand, cater to Twitter-savvy teens and young urban professionals – the types of active folks who frequent the Paddleboard Ocean Festival, L.A. Pride, the Chalk Festival and the Color Run, all of which are pit stops on the frappuccino truck's two-week run.
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