Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 01:44

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Hopefully (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/business/30sbux.html?_r=3&scp=1&sq=broadway+cafe&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) this marks a turning point for people start to appreciating the difference between locally run and owned independent coffee houses and cafes serving high quality, freshly roasted and prepared coffee versus the low grade, poor quality, hot water in cigarette butt rind coffee produced by the faceless corps and their min-waged peons.

I've only ever had Starbucks twice in my life and I never paid for either of them. Thank Christ. I hate spending money on inferior produccts. One was absolutely free when I got their stupid board question correct and the other was during an interview that the interviewer paid for.

Less than $700m profit in $9.4bn turnover? Guess what that is?
Saturation, bitch.

When you're your own competition, you start to sicken the fuck out of people. I remember when the first Starbucks opened up in Glasgow, and then I remember when I left that there were five or six within a two mile radius.

This is a win for the little guy.

Here's to more of them, and let's pour out a large latte (not a venti you faggots) for all those baristas without jobs and little business that died quick and painful deaths along the way, as opposed to this beasts which simply bled slowly and tried to outlive them.

I know there's some of you out there who probably enjoy Starbucks, that's okay... there's plenty of people out there who went to see Meet the Spartans too, you're both contributing to deaths of industries, wallow in your own indulgence.

Muzman on 31/1/2008 at 01:57

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It's kinda interesting how they haven't managed to take hold here. London was filthy with coffee and other sorts of corner chains, but Sydney didn't seem to have any (Well, Gloria Jean's, but no starbuck's, maybe I just didn't notice). And here we've got, I think, none. We've already got our own coffee places. But that sort of thing never stopped Starbucks before; they're business blitzkrieg all the way usually.
Maybe they're feeling the pinch of having to train underpaid, disinterested teenage workforce in all that crap on the menu. It's great for disguising mediocre brew, but as soon as you order something normal it's fairly apparent that you're in the Micky D's of coffee.

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 02:39

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Inferior product pushed through superior marketing, imo.

Digital Nightfall on 31/1/2008 at 03:14

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It's starbucks fault for making me spend all of my money on their coffee. :( Please gumberment give me money because now I am poor and stop these monstars.

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 04:05

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I consider that their profit, while substantial, has probably been hurt by their own aggressive tactics of launching multiple stores as part of a full-on physical and marketing assault on the coffee house market. When the choice becomes binomial at every turn, Starbucks or a local coffee shop everywhere you look, it has one of two effects: you either grow to hate Starbucks and actively avoid it, as I do (and yes, I've tried the fucking awful coffee too), or you capitulate and start going there because "if there's that many then it must be good" or you're fucking sheeple, or you know, you could be one of those poor bastards whose taste in coffee is so unrelentingly awful that you'll willingly drink that piss.

Anyway, my comment on saturation is related to this, there's a marketing concept called blue oceans versus red oceans - you go into a space and carve a niche for yourself and prove to be most innovative/creative/profitable in that space, you've got a blue ocean; contrast that with red ocean, where the sea is full of predators and sizable fish all feeding off each others, constantly ripping each others ideas and attacking one another (red with blood, see?)...
Well, it's clear that Starbucks by applying their strong-arm initially-loss-making-strategy of putting stores everywhere, even next to their own stores five minutes down the road, are only creating a more densely packed red ocean and sooner or later, it will start to work against you unless you diversify or improve yourself. If anything, Starbucks quality has probably deteriorated over time as they're forced to hire more and more staff at low wages in order to run all of their stores.

In short, I don't know what I hate about Starbucks more, their terrible coffee or their terrible corporate strategies that are slowly coming back to bite them in the ass.