FREE Starbucks Sample Tomorrow 4/8/08
04-07-2008, 09:05 PM
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FREE Starbucks Sample Tomorrow 4/8/08
What a shame I don't drink coffee.
From KING5:
Seattle: Starbucks Corp. will start serving up a new "everyday" brew Tuesday, hoping the signature blend will help revive slumping sales in its crucial U.S. market.
To celebrate the launch, it will host a half-hour nationwide coffee-tasting, giving away free 8 oz. cups of Pike Place Roast - named after its first store in Seattle's famed public market - at more than 7,000 U.S. stores beginning at 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT).
Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz said the new blend will have a bold, robust flavor profile that customers have come to expect of Starbucks coffee, but with a smoother, buttery finish.
"It's the best of Starbucks," Schultz said in a conference call Monday.
It will be freshly roasted and shipped directly to stores, hand-scooped, freshly ground and brewed in small batches. Baristas have been told to throw out any brew that hasn't been served within 30 minutes.
"We'll be pouring out more coffee than most people serve," Schultz said.
It will be brewed, both regular and decaf, alongside rotating coffees of the week, and sold by the whole bean for $9.95 per pound.
Starbucks developed Pike Place Roast - testing some 30 roasts and 30 blends - after consulting with nearly 1,000 customers who clamored for a line of drip coffee that wouldn't switch from, say, an earthy Sumatra one week to a bright, citrusy Ethiopia Sidamo the next.
Consistently, customers kept saying: "Give us a coffee we can count on every day, all day, all week," Andrew Linnemann, Starbucks master coffee blender said Monday.
Starbucks has spent the last few months sharpening its focus on the basics - a strategy Schultz is pushing as part of the company's efforts to reinvigorate its U.S. business, which has suffered amid a soft economy and growing competition from rivals ranging from McDonald's Corp. and Dunkin' Donuts to Peet's Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee and small, independent coffee shops.
Yet Schultz bristles at any suggestion that the company's turnaround efforts are aimed at the competition.
"This is not about competition. This is about Starbucks," Schultz said. "We believe that we control our own destiny, and our customers expect a quality from Starbucks that is unparalleled."
One night in late February, the company shut down most of its U.S. stores for three hours to retrain baristas on espresso basics.
The company has also promised to start grinding all its brewed coffee in stores, which will bring back the pungent aroma many customers have missed since the company started using flavor-locked bags of pre-ground coffee years ago.
Schultz has acknowledged that declining U.S. home prices, a widespread credit crunch and rising gasoline and energy costs have undoubtedly made many consumers pare back on affordable luxuries like $4 lattes.
But he has repeatedly insisted he believes Starbucks' bigger problem was that it focused too much on growth in recent years and not enough on customers and its core product.
The company has scaled back the number of new U.S. stores it plans to open this year, while ramping up growth overseas, and remains committed to a long-term goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide. It has about 16,000 stores worldwide today, more than two-thirds of them in the United States.
To promote the new brew, Starbucks will spend at least two months serving all its coffee and espresso drinks in white cups with a version of its original brown mermaid logo. It's been touched up to make the her long, wavy hair cover her bare breasts - a move aimed at pre-empting complaints it's received in the past from people who find it too racy.
Pike Place Roast will also be the first Starbucks coffee bearing a new symbol the company created with Conservation International, showing that all beans are purchased from suppliers that meet high workplace and environmental standards, such as paying pickers well and requiring coffee to be grown in the shade without use of pesticides.
Schultz has two cameos planned for Tuesday: first at a replica of the Pike Place store Starbucks is putting up in Manhattan's Bryant Park, then back in Seattle Tuesday evening at the actual Pike Place cafe.
Seattle: Starbucks Corp. will start serving up a new "everyday" brew Tuesday, hoping the signature blend will help revive slumping sales in its crucial U.S. market.
To celebrate the launch, it will host a half-hour nationwide coffee-tasting, giving away free 8 oz. cups of Pike Place Roast - named after its first store in Seattle's famed public market - at more than 7,000 U.S. stores beginning at 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT).
Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz said the new blend will have a bold, robust flavor profile that customers have come to expect of Starbucks coffee, but with a smoother, buttery finish.
"It's the best of Starbucks," Schultz said in a conference call Monday.
It will be freshly roasted and shipped directly to stores, hand-scooped, freshly ground and brewed in small batches. Baristas have been told to throw out any brew that hasn't been served within 30 minutes.
"We'll be pouring out more coffee than most people serve," Schultz said.
It will be brewed, both regular and decaf, alongside rotating coffees of the week, and sold by the whole bean for $9.95 per pound.
Starbucks developed Pike Place Roast - testing some 30 roasts and 30 blends - after consulting with nearly 1,000 customers who clamored for a line of drip coffee that wouldn't switch from, say, an earthy Sumatra one week to a bright, citrusy Ethiopia Sidamo the next.
Consistently, customers kept saying: "Give us a coffee we can count on every day, all day, all week," Andrew Linnemann, Starbucks master coffee blender said Monday.
Starbucks has spent the last few months sharpening its focus on the basics - a strategy Schultz is pushing as part of the company's efforts to reinvigorate its U.S. business, which has suffered amid a soft economy and growing competition from rivals ranging from McDonald's Corp. and Dunkin' Donuts to Peet's Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee and small, independent coffee shops.
Yet Schultz bristles at any suggestion that the company's turnaround efforts are aimed at the competition.
"This is not about competition. This is about Starbucks," Schultz said. "We believe that we control our own destiny, and our customers expect a quality from Starbucks that is unparalleled."
One night in late February, the company shut down most of its U.S. stores for three hours to retrain baristas on espresso basics.
The company has also promised to start grinding all its brewed coffee in stores, which will bring back the pungent aroma many customers have missed since the company started using flavor-locked bags of pre-ground coffee years ago.
Schultz has acknowledged that declining U.S. home prices, a widespread credit crunch and rising gasoline and energy costs have undoubtedly made many consumers pare back on affordable luxuries like $4 lattes.
But he has repeatedly insisted he believes Starbucks' bigger problem was that it focused too much on growth in recent years and not enough on customers and its core product.
The company has scaled back the number of new U.S. stores it plans to open this year, while ramping up growth overseas, and remains committed to a long-term goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide. It has about 16,000 stores worldwide today, more than two-thirds of them in the United States.
To promote the new brew, Starbucks will spend at least two months serving all its coffee and espresso drinks in white cups with a version of its original brown mermaid logo. It's been touched up to make the her long, wavy hair cover her bare breasts - a move aimed at pre-empting complaints it's received in the past from people who find it too racy.
Pike Place Roast will also be the first Starbucks coffee bearing a new symbol the company created with Conservation International, showing that all beans are purchased from suppliers that meet high workplace and environmental standards, such as paying pickers well and requiring coffee to be grown in the shade without use of pesticides.
Schultz has two cameos planned for Tuesday: first at a replica of the Pike Place store Starbucks is putting up in Manhattan's Bryant Park, then back in Seattle Tuesday evening at the actual Pike Place cafe.
04-08-2008, 07:18 AM
#2
Libertarian Resistance
Joined APC: Feb 2007
Position: 757 FO
Posts: 1,057
Speaking of Starbucks
I read this this morning:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9321
Laissez-faire. It's a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don't try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.
The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers' tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java
But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company's Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase "Laissez Faire" be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn't issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.
Starbucks's company policy is this: "We review each Card before printing it to make sure it meets our personalization policy. We accept most personalization requests, but we can't honor every one. Some requests may contain trademarks that we don't have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate (such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary) or wouldn't want to see on Starbucks-branded products."
Is the phrase "laissez-faire" threatening? Only to officious bureaucracy, I would think. So, it must be that the phrase is considered to be "inappropriate" by corporate Starbucks.
But why should it be considered inappropriate? The phrase itself is an imperative. It's French for "leave us alone," more or less. And it comes to us through history as advice offered to Jean Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under the French King Louis XIV in the 17th century. Colbert is best known for his statement: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." When Colbert asked a group of merchants, "What do you want from us?," the answer was, "laisser nous faire." "Laissez-faire" is, then, an old piece of economic advice with an impeccable French heritage.
Maybe Starbucks considers the phrase inappropriate because it's "overtly political commentary"? Certainly my friend regards it as a firm statement of political philosophy.
And so, at my suggestion, my friend went back to the Web site and asked that his card be issued with the phrase "People Not Profits." Bingo! Starbucks had no problem with that phrase, and the card arrived in a few days.
I wondered just what the company's standards were. If "laissez-faire" is unacceptably political, how could the socialist slogan "people not profits" be acceptable?
My assistant and I tried to get the company to explain its policy. We started by trying to purchase a card with the phrase "Laissez Faire," and were rejected as my friend had been. We then asked a company spokesperson why. He suggested that it might be because "laissez-faire" is a foreign phrase. That seemed possible and a reasonable precaution.
So we tried another foreign phrase – "Si Se Puede," or "Yes we can." It's the United Farm Workers slogan, now adopted by Barack Obama's presidential campaign. That sailed right through. The senator's political campaign slogan was acceptable.
We called again. Several spokespeople at Starbucks and at Arroweye, the company that actually creates personalized cards for Starbucks and other retailers, said that they couldn't be sure, but that the phrase was probably rejected because it is political. They explained that they would not allow a customer to print "McCain for President" or "Support the Democratic Party" on a Starbucks card. And they noted that they had rejected a request for "My coffee is a weapon." But fewer than 1% of card requests are rejected.
They had no explanation as to how "People Not Profits" and "Si Se Puede" could be regarded as less political than "Laissez Faire."
I'm still hoping that it was all a computer glitch, and that some day my latte-drinking, non-tax-hiking friends will be able to get their very own customized Starbucks gift card with "Laissez Faire" emblazoned on it – even if it does risk a sneer from the barista.
Starbucks has prospered mightily in a free economy. For the most recent fiscal year, the company earned $672.6 million on revenue of $9.4 billion, a very healthy profit. And these days, in the wake of a California Superior Court judge's order that the company repay $100 million in back tips that were shared by shift supervisors, Starbucks honchos just might like a little less government intervention in their affairs and a little more laissez-faire.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9321
Laissez-faire. It's a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don't try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.
The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers' tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java
But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company's Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase "Laissez Faire" be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn't issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.
Starbucks's company policy is this: "We review each Card before printing it to make sure it meets our personalization policy. We accept most personalization requests, but we can't honor every one. Some requests may contain trademarks that we don't have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate (such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary) or wouldn't want to see on Starbucks-branded products."
Is the phrase "laissez-faire" threatening? Only to officious bureaucracy, I would think. So, it must be that the phrase is considered to be "inappropriate" by corporate Starbucks.
But why should it be considered inappropriate? The phrase itself is an imperative. It's French for "leave us alone," more or less. And it comes to us through history as advice offered to Jean Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under the French King Louis XIV in the 17th century. Colbert is best known for his statement: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." When Colbert asked a group of merchants, "What do you want from us?," the answer was, "laisser nous faire." "Laissez-faire" is, then, an old piece of economic advice with an impeccable French heritage.
Maybe Starbucks considers the phrase inappropriate because it's "overtly political commentary"? Certainly my friend regards it as a firm statement of political philosophy.
And so, at my suggestion, my friend went back to the Web site and asked that his card be issued with the phrase "People Not Profits." Bingo! Starbucks had no problem with that phrase, and the card arrived in a few days.
I wondered just what the company's standards were. If "laissez-faire" is unacceptably political, how could the socialist slogan "people not profits" be acceptable?
My assistant and I tried to get the company to explain its policy. We started by trying to purchase a card with the phrase "Laissez Faire," and were rejected as my friend had been. We then asked a company spokesperson why. He suggested that it might be because "laissez-faire" is a foreign phrase. That seemed possible and a reasonable precaution.
So we tried another foreign phrase – "Si Se Puede," or "Yes we can." It's the United Farm Workers slogan, now adopted by Barack Obama's presidential campaign. That sailed right through. The senator's political campaign slogan was acceptable.
We called again. Several spokespeople at Starbucks and at Arroweye, the company that actually creates personalized cards for Starbucks and other retailers, said that they couldn't be sure, but that the phrase was probably rejected because it is political. They explained that they would not allow a customer to print "McCain for President" or "Support the Democratic Party" on a Starbucks card. And they noted that they had rejected a request for "My coffee is a weapon." But fewer than 1% of card requests are rejected.
They had no explanation as to how "People Not Profits" and "Si Se Puede" could be regarded as less political than "Laissez Faire."
I'm still hoping that it was all a computer glitch, and that some day my latte-drinking, non-tax-hiking friends will be able to get their very own customized Starbucks gift card with "Laissez Faire" emblazoned on it – even if it does risk a sneer from the barista.
Starbucks has prospered mightily in a free economy. For the most recent fiscal year, the company earned $672.6 million on revenue of $9.4 billion, a very healthy profit. And these days, in the wake of a California Superior Court judge's order that the company repay $100 million in back tips that were shared by shift supervisors, Starbucks honchos just might like a little less government intervention in their affairs and a little more laissez-faire.
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