Wishing on a fallen Starbucks

Their coffee is better than the mediocre stuff served in restaurants, etc., but McDonald’s coffee is gaining on them. The stock is no longer a growth stock, and I’m not sure whether or not it is a value stock at the current price. But, the coffee is still great, and the food is not bad.

No big surprise. Customer service has gone from great to terrible with burned-out, rude baristas who treat you like it’s an honor to be served by them, if they can be bothered at all. I tried the local competition I’ve ignored all these years and guess what? I no longer go to Starbucks.

Starbucks is irrelevant.

End of story.

No one should be surprised by Starbuck’s fall from grace. The waste of human resources and Starbuck’s continuing failure to “do business” as an international company, rather than
the small local company they started out, has contributed to this spetacular fall. Starbuck’s needs to grow up.

TOM: As for backing Dunkin’ Donuts, the last time I went there for a drip coffee it was actually MORE than Starbucks drip coffee. The price for a large coffee was about $2.25 here in DC. Funny that nobody ridicules Dunkin Donuts as being “pretentious” and they’re the working class hero…despite higher prices.

It’s definately about the “ambiance”, because the coffe isn’t so good and the prices are out of control. So, if you want to sit around a read the paper in a place that smells good, I guess it’s ok. It’s not for me.

Starbucks has run up against the natural limits of its birthing strategy, which was to take a basic commodity, wrap a branded “experience” around it, and mark the product up by 400 to 500 percent of actual market value. It worked like crazy for awhile, but when money gets tight, as it now, people pay more attention to product quality and value for money. Starbucks loses on those counts. The basic drip coffee isn’t very good, and one premium drinks costs as much as a whole cheap lunch somewhere else. Starbucks is going down for the same reasons McDonald’s went down a few years ago: bad food, too many items, poor value for money.

The other big problem facing Starbucks is that it’s run afoul of the zeitgeist. The Starbucks brand used to be seen as warm and sophisticated, but now it’s perceived as pretentious and ridiculous. Given the prevailing back-to-basics national mood, I think you’d rather be backing Dunkin Donuts, the working class hero’s coffee. Great cup, reasonably priced, no fu-fu “experience” added. Here in Seattle the local newspaper ran a talkback like this asking Seattlites what they thought of the Starbucks store closures, and the overwhelming sentiment was: it’s a good start, Starbucks is over, nobody goes there anymore. In Seattle! That’s how far the Starbucks star has fallen.

Hey Mr.Starbucks, you’re starting to look like Mr.GM. I used to go to your store daily to enjoy a great tasting ‘hand-made’coffee made by the baristas.Then,you started to water down the quality using ‘more efficient’ machines,probably from the recommendations of your genius employees with an MBA, just like GM. I haven’t been to your store in 6 months.Now,I easily save $200/mo, and serve myself with a kick-ass coffee the way I want everyday.Like GM, you don’t deserve my hard earned bucks.

SBUX with adding food, more smoothies and other non coffee features is becoming more of a quick serve rest and less specialty. At a P/E of 17 or so, its still overvalued in the QSR world and has room to fall. Unless if can figure out growth sectors to remain specialty, it will remain have a lower valuation.

Not the best coffee and way too expensive. I’d rather support the locals.

I enjoy Starbuck’s. The people are very friendly, no matter which store you go in. The latte’s,fraps, whatever you buy are great…Starbuck’s is not just about the coffee, but also the Starbuck’s “ambiance”. The way the interior is set up w/muted,earthy tones…music playing…something of a college dorm-esc feel….Good enough for me to continue to buy a caramel machiato.

Serves them right.

Not only is their product way overpriced, it’s poor in quality as well. Trying to roast that quantity of beans on a daily basis results in burned and bitter tasting coffee.

Anybody who knows anything about gourmet coffee wouldn’t drink their brew…just go to Seattle and see what people drink in Starbucks’ home town. Starbucks is the Budweiser of coffee.

Look for a local roaster and buy from them. Not only will you get a far better tasting cup of coffee, you’ll be supporting your local economy and reducing demand for oil since the roasted beans won’t be shipped all over the world.

Are you listening, Starbucks? Your product quality has suffered; your Pikes blend is weak and makes it harder to get the better coffees at the store, and your prices are too high. I still buy from Starbucks when traveling, mostly as an occasional treat, but it’s too expen$ive for regular daily use.

When coffee houses started becoming popular in the early ’90’s, I thought the whole attraction was the small-time local quality of them. I still prefer my locally owned hipster joint downtown. So I didn’t really “get” Starbucks for a long time. But this is the US, Starbuck’s had the right model for a national franchise chain, and their coffee IS good.

They overexpanded ridiculously. But they are still popular and widely recognized, so I think there is potential for stabilization. That is a word that I don’t hear much in business and economic circles – stabilization. It could be related to the ecological concept of sustainability. It’s time to start talking about how to create prosperity WITHOUT dependency upon unbridled growth. Starbucks is an example of this in the business arena.

They did grow fast, but in business, if you’re not moving forwards, your moving backwards. I am more concerned with the unethical growth. In Denver, on 16th st mall, there are 4 Starbucks within a couple blocks radius. The strategy was to put all the other shops out of business, and make the area unatractive for competition. There are a lot of markets that they are not in, but they chose instead to put up 4 stores in 2 blocks downtown. They deserve to loose money and close stores.

They grew too fast and now have too many “kids” running the stores. I’ve had so many bad experiences in the past couple years from the children, I mean employees, screwing up my coffees that I now switched to Dunkin Donuts EXCELLENT plain old coffee.

I don’t understand why the MBAs think they need a TRILLION stores? Just so the can get larger and larger saleries?!?! Why not have a REASONABLE number of stores, have WELL paid employees and focus on do a great job at just one thing – COFFEE! Duh!

I love a good Starbucks coffee, but they are soooo expensive! When I can buy a Happy Meal for lunch at McDonald’s for almost a dollar LESS than one small mocha at Starbucks, something’s gotta give.

The clamor over the shrinkage of Starbucks just makes me laugh. Fads are always short lived and food fads are even worse. Yet, every time a Krispy Kream or a Starbucks or a Blueberry Drink fad comes along, everybody expands into it like it is real and sustainable growth.

Starbucks will probably always be around, and will probably always turn a profit. (Once they shrink down to a sustainable size.) Everything would have been a whole lot better if they had just kept high prices and socked away money while the fad was high, and then not had a pile of stores and employees to get rid of once the “Fad” stage burned though.

But no one ever pays attention to the past. Soon we will have thousands of acres of blueberries that farmers can’t get enough price for to make a living.