Comment about "Starbucks only serves burnt coffee" in 3..2..1

Damn right I'm rejoicing. Capitalism has no place for $5 lattes. It was a FAD, its over. If you have investments in starbucks, pull out, because they've peaked and its going down from here.

You can only make money for so long when you'r epaying the overhead on stores a few blocks apart.

@Bladefist: On the upside the trend has produced quite a few small time coffee shops that are likely to stick around having built a solid following.

Where's Pat Robertson to announce that the quarterly loss is God's retribution for the spread legs of the mermaid prostitute on their coffee cups?

(And yesterday's earthquake was God trying to sift the fruit and nuts out of California)

@waffles: ...hence the restructuring of the support and the closure of nearly 1/10th of the US stores.

@Bladefist: ...again, where are you getting the $5 latte argument? Do you actually know how much Starbucks charges for a latte? Anyway, capitalism dictates that what the people want, by way of a free market, is what the people get. Therefore, the people were not only willing to pay $5(?) for a latte, they demanded it by investing in the company, requesting new stores in their areas, and supporting the stores through their daily visits for their coffee fix. Perhaps it was a fad, but now it's like McDonalds...a part of the "fast-food" restaurant world that you will still see 30+ years down the road.

Maybe if Starbucks got really serious about improving the quality of the 'Starbuck's Experience'? Maybe they could just close ALL the stores for a few hours and have a massive company-wide training session...... oh, nevermind.

@FatalisticDread: uhh, I've been there? Maybe the small is under $5. Oh wait, they don't have small. They have some prissy word that means small. I've never gotten out of there spending less then $5.

Capitalism has to do with supply/demand/competition/etc. Don't take my comment too serious. As soon as everyone saw the fad, people were like, uhhh, I can open a coffee shop, make better drinks, and charge way less. And so it was. Now, starbucks is obsolete.

To add: I go through a drive in coffee shop. All they sell is coffee and lattes, etc. I can get a large for 3 bux, and every 10th drink is free. And they call it large, so I don't feel feminine when ordering my drinks :)

@Bladefist: I assure you, if you order a drink at Starbucks using the words "small", "medium", or "large", they will know exactly what you mean, and give you the proper order.

@Bladefist: ...what do you order? And where do you live? I know it's more pricey in places like LA and NY...but generally speaking, you can get a 16oz (I didn't even have to use the "prissy" name) latte for under $4. I've been in mom and pop coffee joints that charge more than Starbucks because of the increase of prices across the board. Generally speaking, the mom and pop places base their prices on Starbucks prices...no one wants to be the more expensive joint.

Why is there such a hatred of Starbucks? Why are they so deserving of your hate? McDonald's is worse and more plentiful. Burger King, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, etc all have equal or more locations and shitty working conditions but everyone just ignores that. They get pissed because they think everyone that goes into a Starbucks is a stuck-up assclown willing to pay $10 for a coffee and pastry. It's not that way, just so you know...plus it's a pretty good place to work while working towards a career or while going to school.

Anyway, I'm wasting my time, so I'll stop.

@mdoublej: ...yes, but then there wouldn't be a problem and he wouldn't have a problem with Starbucks other than the prices he is stating.

I on 4 occassions went to starbucks for a quad grande white mocha because my friend had one and I tried it and liked it... but money is far too tight now to buy that $5 drink, and yes it was $5.

@snoop-blog: ...yes, that is at least $5. White Mochas are pretty much the most expensive drink sold there. Add over $1 for the extra shots and you get up there. I will never dispute that some of the drinks are expensive. But when people start screaming about the "$5 LATTES OMFG!!!!" I get annoyed since they generally aren't.

I never understood paying airport prices outside the airport. There is a place for Starbucks and it is called tha airport. Someone needs to open up a chain called Mooncents and charge under $1 for all drinks, that would make sense.

@laserjobs: ...and they would go out of business.

@Bladefist: "The free market is obviously wrong because it values coffee more highly than I do."

Starbucks are just annoying and too trendy. There will be somethin else next....here in PDX they have Bikini Barista coffee shops that are becoming all the rage!

The numbers are not that straightforward. Revenue increased by $200 million. The loss ($0.1) per share was caused by charges related to the store closures. Excluding those charges, there was a profit (albeit short of estimates). Sorry folks, but SBUX is in decent shape. The share price went up on the news.

@Bladefist: Yet you don't feel feminine ordering a latte? "Small latte" is more feminine than "tall coffee" any day.

@VikingP77:

I miss Coffee People, it sucks that they are only at the aiport now.

@Bladefist:
You are strange. I mean I agree that $5 for a cup of coffee is insane, but you're still strange. How many other things have no place in capitalism? Anything you deem expensive?

@Bladefist: I agree,the fad is over and dump SBUX stock.

And IT IS THE PRICE,in toughers time people not only cut back but they THINK about what they are spending their money on.This is only the first of many negative quarters.

I congradulate SBUX for being able to perpetuate and capitalize on trend but the game IS OVER.

Starbucks bought out the last of the competition around here a couple years ago. There's a couple independent places left, but as I've already altered my commute by about a mile just to get to a starbucks between me and work, adding a few extra miles to get to one of those independents doesn't make a lot of sense.

But remember that big shutdown they had a few months ago for retraining or whatnot (coinciding with the new roast or blend or whatever?), here's the thing, it made a pretty rotten starbucks experience worse for me.

Every day, I order an iced coffee. I'll save my complaints about conical volume and how I usually have at least half a cup of unmelted ice by the time I'm through, but we're not talking the world's most complex order here: "Venti iced coffee, unsweetened, no room." (i.e., fill about a third of the 20 oz cup with iced coffee, and then top it off with ice so it looks full.)

These days, I keep seeing them pour the leftovers of the hot coffee they couldn't sell into the pitcher they use for ice coffee. So I'm getting at best, whatever's been sitting around, poured over ice into the pitcher, and then later poured over ice again. This is the lesser "WTF?" of my starbucks experience.

The greater "WTF?" comes from every time I've been there since that big retraining session. Apparently, one of the big sticking points was to serve drinks based strictly on the order queue. If one of the employees actually fulfills my order, they absolutely won't serve it to me until every drink that was ordered before it is server. I know because I've asked. The usual interchange goes "Hey, I'd like to get out of here, and I can see my drink sitting there in your queue. Can you just slap a lid on it?" The response I get is "No, we're not allowed. We have to finish these other drinks before it.". Retort: "But it's done. You successfully poured the iced coffee into the cup and scooped in the ice, and now you're waiting for enough milk to steam for whatever orders came before mine. You have to stand there and wait while my drink is deemed 'unservable' because it doesn't have a lid on it?" Answer: "No, we're not supposed to."

I don't know the training regimen, and I'll admit that I'm probably biased having once, long ago, done a similar job (No, I wasn't a barista, as I won't acknowledge that title. I was counter-help (you know, the sort that was thinking "What the hell is a 'frappacino?' in the mid-90s before their trademarked terms had completely debased the culinary arts) I'm making wild assumptions based on my observations.)

But hooray, Starbucks gets a correction. It's just a little hard to believe that their shuttering of locations, or trying to focus on "core business" or whatnot means anything when they've just retrofitted all the local places with a new (presumably expensive) machine capable of dispensing the "sobretto" (which as best as I can tell is the equivalent of the grapefruit slushie)

(p.s., I'm suspicious of anyone interested in the experience of a consumer that refers to a company by their stock ticker symbol. Just sayin')

YAY!

Maybe they will close more shops down so that local coffee shops will start coming back.

Get an Aeropress. Small enough to follow you to work, but it still makes great espresso. All you need is hot water and coffee grinds. Only problem is that people think its chem-lab looks are weird.

The best coffee I've ever had was from a really local place,.... my kitchen! Seriously though, I do brew a mean pot. Compared to any coffee shop, do it yourself at home is by far the cheapest way to get your fix.

BTW- What is it with all these energy drinks nowadays? Are we humans just not good enough on our own? Shit, not to mention the price of these damn 8oz cans, ENERGY IS EXPENSIVE! And apparently really bad for your heart. There's something wrong with the world when working as hard and fast as you can just isn't good enough. Hell, lets skip the hfcs and taurine, and legalize some real uppers...

/end rant.

yet another 'captain obvious' capitalist story.

business becomes trendy, business thinks we need them on every street corner, business over extends itself, their profits suck, business realizes we didn't want them on every street corner, business closes extra stores.

gee. i never thought it would happen to starbucks

@snoop-blog: I noticed the unusual barrage of "energy drinks" too.

I'm guessing that every mega-corp is trying to cash-in on whatever youth-excessive-spending trend is going on at the moment.

I think the powerthirst ad says it all IMO

@fuzzymuffins: I don't think it had anything to do with the amount of stores, but people cutting back on unnecessary purchases.

Two of the things I hated about the 90s are in trouble: Starbucks and SUVs. There's hope for the future.