Starbucks closes just built store in Washington Missouri...

[Gogi]

swear to god, open less than three months! They also closed a brand new store in St. Louis along with two older stores. Question: Why did they keep building when they obviously have known for some time that they had overextended themselves? :wtf:

[BlooInBloo]

1. Uh.... they're closing like 600 stores.

[FreeState]

2. They just had a leadership change

they put a new CEO in I believe a few months ago. Probably why, same reason they are selling that crappy Pikes Place roast that taste like 7-11 crap IMO...

New CEO came in in January: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/346397_sbuxdonald08.html

[Swamp Rat]

3. How many local, family-owned cafes closed as a result of the Starbucks?

Hopefully family-owned cafes will replace the Starbucks.

[XOKCowboy]

6. To counter that argument...

Starbucks is the reason we Americans crave overpriced coffee drinks and I know of at least a couple of local coffee shops that have opened up for the "Starbucks haters". Also in places where Starbucks hasn't yet opened a store (yes there are still a few places LOL) like in small towns on the rural interstates, it's rare that you won't find a local drive-thru Espresso stand to feed the caffeine needs of interstate traveler. Heck even the small town I grew up in in Oklahoma now has an "espresso shop" with a drive through. You never saw that before Starbucks.

I don't trust large corporations either but Starbucks isn't exactly Wal*Mart when it comes to killing local businesses.

[HereSince1628]

4. Starbucks thought it had a monopoly on overcharging...but Exxon

et al got the smell of that cup o nut$ and Viola, Violins and Violets! all the expendable money for $4 a cup coffee just vanished.

[XOKCowboy]

5. They went away from their original, very successful formula..

Of rigorous selection criteria for opening stores. In the beginning they studied tons of stats to find the right places with the right traffic flow, local demographics, etc before buying land and opening a store. New management came in that thought, heck with that, we can build anywhere and people will come in.

They've now brought back the team who formulated the original, successful new store selection process.

[AllieB]

7. Their regular coffee is the same price as Dunkies

and much better IMO. Their blended drinks are definitely overpriced. I never order those fancy schmancy drinks. I like my coffee plain and strong.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. Actually, the answer is that Starbucks practices predatory market flooding.

Like CVS and other explicitly "predatory" chains (y'all can learn this in marketing course, if you're interested), Starbucks "blocks the box" by flooding a market with enough stores to drive the competition out of business -- explicit monopoly behavior -- they try to open enough stores to serve every coffee drinker in a town, hence, where you would have two coffee shops on opposite ends of the block, Starbucks will open one on both ends of the block so no one else can stay in the market.

This is the opposite of "conservative market research" corporate strategy which is based on auto-sheds, with each major chain refusing to open a store within the same auto-shed as a bunch of other stores based on the projected number of new customers (brought in by eternally assumed exponential greenfields development sprawl, which is why they open more stores out in the sprawl than downtown) with a goal of totally minimizing competition. Hence, every community will have exactly one K-Mart, exactly one Applebees, etc. all located across the street from one another and all spaced 5 miles apart with no close-in, walkable retail (not that anyone on DU or anywhere else in America walks to shop, or has any intention of supporting real funding for rapid transit or transit-oriented development...)

Both approaches to market research are equally extreme on opposite ends and both are equally destructive to civic life.