Wednesday, July 02, 2008

600 STARBUCKS CLOSING; IT'S THE OLD DISCRETIONARY INCOME TRICK AGAIN!

No celebration in the Basin that there are 600 US Starbucks closing. I do remember commenting that, as the price of gas was beginning to rise and the balance of trade was wheezing, late '06 seemed like a strange time to start up 1500 new Starbucks. Certainly, it was an aggressive strategy that, even if we assume the other 900 Starbucks worldwide are profitable, may not have been worth the resulting black eye.

No word on whether our very nice Starbucks is on the hit list. Some of the people who work there left decent employment or self-employment to come on board Starbucks so I sincerely hope that this shop is profitable or at least too new to give up on. The nice folks there deserve a shot to make it work.

Still, I'd like to get a peek at the market research for some of the Starbucks that are closing. Wonder how much belt-tightening by families these researchers anticipated.

Here's one piece of good news for all the hopefully still employed barristas out there. The biggest black market in the failing days of Nazi Germany was not booze, cigarettes or medical supplies. It was coffee. UMRB is heavily stocked with coffee-drinking Germans. Starbucks, if you can just hold the fort, this place may crack out.

3 Comments:

At 8:36 AM, July 02, 2008, Blogger TOOKIE said...

I hope they do not close ours , the economics of 5#'s of Pikes for the price of 4#'s really would hurt more than gas. We drink a load of coffee here at Fort Tookie .

The Pikes grew on me , it may be the smoothest of their bolds .

 
At 6:37 PM, July 02, 2008, Anonymous Anonymous said...

what's wrong with a locally owned store....I think there are still a couple left, plus they don't sell the acid that Starbucks is known for.

 
At 8:01 PM, July 02, 2008, Blogger UMRBlog said...

I don't disagree much. If you notice, my principal concern was for the local people who relocated to S'bucks and left OK employment.

Over time, there have been some great coffee houses here.

TYFCB

 

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