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Today Starbucks all over are closing for 190 caffeine-free minutes. The blackout (hold the cream and sugar) is set for 5:30pm, so be prepared for a temporary Venti Soy Latte drought. Even more disturbing for Starbuckistas, however, is the sign above. The "Dear John" letter is from an 8th Street outlet (between 5th and University) and addressed to its loyal patrons. A closing Starbucks? Creepy, indeed.
As for the 8th Street regulars, looks like they'll now have to walk about 1.5 blocks to get their overpriced morning buzz.
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a dear john letter from a corporation... wowza.
ok so is it just me, being a not-very-often starbucks patron, that doesn't get the "community" vibe i sense with these shops? i can't get the idea of the company being a chain just as large as taco bell having any sense of community or attachment to its patrons, but this seems to indicate something to the contrary.
am i missing something?
Dunkin Donuts fights back with 99 small lattes today from 1-10p. Mmmm...donuts.
barnes and noble "starbucks" will be open
That's fucking retarded.
Seriously, your coffee sucks and so do your customers.
oh thank god you said that Ph--i thought i was honestly on the outside looking in.
1 down 2,149,823,908,439,085,390,853,908,523 to go
I'm not a fan of Starbucks BUT, I gotta admit, they do have their own little community feel.
I wrote my entire masters thesis at a Starbucks, mostly b/c, for some strange reason the creative juices flowed there. I could buy a mediocre regular drip coffee and sit there for hours without anyone bothering me or feeling guilty about taking advantage of a small business, so I just went with it. After a few weeks of spending nearly every day there you start to realize that people really do treat it as a community space. The same old folks come in and talk in Spanish with the baristas, asking them about their families, etc. The same teenyboppers come through at 3:30, mothers and nannies with kids meet there regularly, etc etc etc.
I suppose it's inevitable that it would happen. In New York people need a living room, and unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, Starbucks provides that space. Not a defense of starbucks, just an observation. And I think its interesting how organic communities can form even in the most overbearing, precision controlled corporate atmospheres.
A closed Starbucks isn't terribly "creepy" or unexpected--they just laid off 220 employees and put a hiring freeze on a remaining 380 open positions. Something is definitely up at the company--they just reinstalled a former executive as head of global development yesterday.
office productivity will sink to its lowest.
Something is definitely up at the company
Yeah, their stock price cratered because it was no longer a "growth story". Being merely profitable is a sin on Wall Street. You have to grow at 20+ percent a year or else you takeover bait.
Why no producivity? Fourbucks' "coffee" is not coffee...in every outlet there is a sliver of java essence added to the usual full bodied milkfroth in an attempt to make it coffee-esque...so if productivity was driven by caffeine it will not be affected one bit by the closure...
Presumably they are all getting retrained on what coffee actually is/tastes like/how it differs from straight up milk?
i order black coffee from starbucks and it tastes surprisingly like coffee...
Shit! Starbucks on 8th is gone? *sigh* It's over for NYC.
...sorry, I couldn't resist :>)
Who knew that stores could write in fake-human handwriting.
Also, their company is scrambling because every crappy coffee chain is mirroring their methods plus... new McDonalds coffee-bars... coming soon in a McDonalds near you.
geez, how much overhead can there be in water? ok, add in the 2-3 baristas and a cashier, but remember each store gets hundreds of customers per staff member. so now how much? and it's not like the higher than normal nyc "real estate" per square foot rental fees paid by manhattan starbucks are the same paid in sheboygan, wisconsin. so now how much?
most importantly, any coffee commodity broker worth his weight in java beans will tell you starbucks over-roasts theirs.
geez, how much overhead can there be in water? ok, add in the 2-3 baristas and a cashier, but remember each store gets hundreds of customers per staff member. so now how much? and it's not like the higher than normal nyc "real estate" per square foot rental fees paid by manhattan starbucks are the same paid in sheboygan, wisconsin. so now how much?
most importantly, any coffee commodity broker worth his weight in java beans will tell you starbucks over-roasts theirs.
Oh noes! You mean people who need coffee between 5:30 and 8:30 pm tonight will have to go, just one time, somewhere else?
What an overblown non-story.
*goes into withdrawal*
*gets the shakes*
i'm not too big on economics or business, but i feel like once you have stores every 2 blocks and at least 1 in almost every town, wouldn't you hit a plateau?
whatever. their coffee sucks and every other drink is way too sweet.
It's not unexpected. They couldn't keep growing forever.
It is probably a form letter, designed to look handwritten, from the second most evil company from the State of Washington.
How can they loose money charging gullible people $5 for a cup of coffee?
So the only question is what will it be replaced with - another useless bank branch or the two billionth Duane Reade in Manhattan?
They're closing every Starbucks today for three hours for "remedial espresso training" for the baristas. Everything will be normal (bad coffee, predatory business practices, etc.) at 8:30pm. It's just training disguised as a publicity stunt, a stunt that's obviously working as every news outlet in the country has picked up the non-story, crreating an unfathomable amount of free advertising for the geniuses in Seattle.
People really need to stop bitching about Starbucks because the majority of it is just the normal 'this is a giant company--I must be trendy and hate it' bullshit. The good portion of people who complain never go to them or have gone once and base their whole idea of a chain store on a single shitty service and disliking the flavor of the day coffee.
And seriously, let's stop pretending that 1.70 is overpriced for a giant cup of Joe. I got to the guy in a cart on the corner and get a shitty cup half the since for a 1.25. Yeah, I like my coffee a little more bitter than most (you know, so it taste like coffee and not piss) but still. And even if you have to be a fancy fuck and get all these latte-cino shit...someone point out these these 'amazing and cheap' coffee shops that make giant lattes for under 3 dollars. Because man...they MUST be worth the subway fare from Midtown and Queens for that whole dollar savings!