Starbucks Chairman Says Chain Has Lost Its ‘Romance’
CEO Schultz says increased emphasis on drive-thru service means the typical visit ‘is more like a hand job outside the Lincoln Tunnel.’
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told executives in a memo last week that rapid growth has lead to a “watering down” of the Starbucks brand as well as its iced teas. The confidential e-mail to senior executives was, like every other corporate e-mail since 1997, leaked immediately to the media.
In an effort to construct an individual Starbucks store for every person in the country over age 14, “we may have over-extended a bit,” wrote Schultz. “We need to scale back growth to say, one Starbucks per family and get back to our core business - overcharging for coffee in a faux-European setting.”
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America runs on lurching pragmatism
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Starbucks has faced stiff competition in recent years from McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts as these chains have upgraded their coffee offerings. Even Burger King Holdings, typically five to seven years behind any fast-food trend, has discovered that profit margins on a cup of coffee are, as one company analyst put it, “higher than Lindsay Lohan on a Friday night.” Increasingly, Starbucks’ competitors are realizing that injecting air into a cup of coffee and calling it a latte drops another $1.75 of profit straight to the bottom line.
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