Friday, July 18, 2008

Bye, Bye Starbucks


I’m very glad that I’m not a big fan of Starbucks’ coffee and that I feed my caffeine addiction in other ways. Our local store is on the list of casualties announced by the company that is shuttering more than 600 locations during the next six months or so. About 16 stores total in the St. Louis metro will close.

Call me a heathen (or worse), but the French vanilla cappuccino of the Quik Trip or 7-Eleven set just tastes better to me, and at a price I find a lot more palatable, too. But I do like some of Starbucks’ breads and pastries, so I will miss occasionally grabbing a few of those. And I feel sorry for those soon-to-be jobless baristas, something like 12,000 of them! I genuinely hate to see folks lose their jobs for anything other than unbelievably poor personal, not company, performance.

From the beginning, I didn’t think our community could support its own Starbucks. But it survived longer (opening in early 2006) and drew more of a crowd than I thought it would. There always seems to be a pretty steady stream of customers there, even after the temps started heating up back in May.

So, in tribute, perhaps I will go by there tonight. Mayhaps they’ll have something good to start the day with tomorrow …

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Starbucks is the new nicotine so even if people are on their last dime they're going to get their vente latte. I'm not a coffee fan so I wouldn't miss the three or four I've seen so far around here. I'm a chai person myself.

NV said...

V -- It's fortunately something that was wasted on me. :-)

Ann said...

I adore Starbucks, or rather coffee shops, just aesthetically. But really, I rarely spend time in them anymore unless I'm at a Barnes n Noble.

You see, I wised up and bought a fancy and pricey home espresso machine - bc when you calculated the price of daily espressos/coffee - you could pay for that damn expensive machine in about 6 mths - 1 year and it ROCKS! Woot!