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The_Dude

MTD,

Americans sell the coffee but I'm not awhere that they make/grow the coffee. They do roast the coffee. The best coffee beans come from the Blue Mountains of Jamiaca without question! This is due to thier geographical location and soil quality for this plant aswell as the ideal elevation and climate. Everything else is second choice. Not to say that second choice is bad but just preference. IMHO people that do not have choice in selection tend to settle and I think this is the case in many areas of the world.

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kingwilly

aware??


settle? as in America?

The_Dude

I also mat add if Micky"D's" does go into this venture they will not make a dent into SB profits. Which stocks by the way is are on the trade market.
SBUX Bad Browser Configuration - AOL Money & Finance

kingwilly

My God, your grammer is worser than mine!

The_Dude

Having alittle of the whacky tabbacy with your coffee today?

Thormaturge

MtD I can't honestly believe you consider Thai coffee to be superior to coffee from Kenya or Colombia. You'll be telling us about the merits of Thai whisky next.

jizzybloke

I thought the best coffee in the world was supposed to be that cat shit stuff?

Here it is,

Kopi Luwak

Thormaturge

"Kopi Luwak sells for $75 per quarter pound."

That isn't Starbucks, it's Megabucks. Having read the article I think I'll pass.

Jet Gorgon

I like real Thai coffee brewed in that white muslin bag. Fantastic.
We've got a Starbucks on three corners of one street downtown. Useless coffee and the customers are just as lame. My Croatian cafe makes superb coffee from some Italian company.

Marmite the Dog

It's not.

I can't believe that you don't understand that I am saying that Starbuck's coffee is shite. It doesn't matter where the coffee is grown, they still manage to turn it into a cup of hot blandness.

The bloke on the corner of the street with his little bag filter and tin of condensed milk should be hired by Starbucks to show then how to make a decent cup.

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Jet Gorgon

^ Yeppers. Get the donut lady there, too. There's an SB at our grocery store. Fek, SB wanted $3 for a cookie. I went to the bakery and got one for $0.79.

Texpat

I don't like Starbucks for two reasons -- it's way overpriced. And there's always a bunch of gay, poser, tech geeks slouching around with laptops and bluetooths, gesturing overboard and playing with their hair.

The best coffee for my dollar is at Dunkin Donuts. One or two flavors, always the same, always cheap and always good.

Marmite the Dog

There's no hope for some people...

rawlins

OK then all you coffee snobs on here.... What's the best 'chain' place for a decent coffee in Thailand?...

Anybody like Black Canyon?....

peterpan

Its the same everywhere, SB's attracts the poseurs but the ones in bangkok are the worst, bunch of plastic people trying to out pose each other.
On sunday mornings, the sight of these people trying to fight to get a space to park their BM's right outside SB at Thonglor is pathetic.

^ Not much with Black Canyon, although they forget to make the coffee hot sometimes, I tell them nicely and they redo it, Foods OK there too.

Marmite the Dog

That's a bit like asking what's the best American car. They're all shit, but I suppose Black Canyon is the least shite out of all of them.

And as the dirty old man said, the food ain't too bad.

Thormaturge

^
Marmite, you jest. Black Canyon?

Lordy. You must like a long wait for your instant coffee. I do like their little letter shaped biscuits though. They do make a good iced lemon tea but even that can take 20 minutes.

tristram

Nescafe is OK

Texpat

Like Starbucks or not, it's hard to argue with success. No other coffee chain is even close to them. Unfortunately, they'll not be seeing any of my money.

***

"Books about Starbucks don’t come in as many flavors as the company’s beverages, but busy authors are closing the gap. With four titles either recently published or set to be published this spring, bookstores will carry at least eight books about the Seattle coffee chain. Each purports to reveal why Starbucks is one of the fastest-growing companies in recent years, tells you how to invest in the next Starbucks or turn your company into the next Starbucks, or simply marvels at the genius of Howard Schultz, the Starbucks chair whose own book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, appeared in 1997.

What can you learn from the books? Starbucks’ story is endlessly fascinating because of the unusual way the company has built a global chain and a global brand, explains Joseph Michelli, a Colorado Springs, Colorado, consultant and author of The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary.

“Unlike McDonald’s, which is a franchise, [Starbucks] retained ownership through corporate-owned locations,” Michelli says. “And unlike traditional marketing where you’d use a lot of ad dollars, the brand has leveraged itself without advertising.”

Brand building without huge ad spending and growth without the loss of control that franchising can bring are ideas that interest many entrepreneurs. A big dream is another one, and Michael T. Moe, CEO of ThinkEquity Partners in San Francisco and author of Finding the Next Starbucks: How to Identify and Invest in the Hot Stocks of Tomorrow, says Starbucks’ early leaders were also distinguished by their exceptionally highflying entrepreneurial visions. “Aspirationally, it was always huge,” he explains.

If there is one thing that everybody who studies Starbucks agrees on, it’s that the company gets a large portion of its strength from the way it provides employees with a great place to work. “What Starbucks does magnificently well is treat employees not as pawns, but as partners,” says John Moore, an Austin, Texas, marketing consultant, former Starbucks marketer and author of Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed From the Grounds of Starbucks. “They spend as much time and as many dollars trying to speak to employees as they do trying to speak to customers.”


There are limits to the Starbucks lesson. The window of opportunity may no longer be open to start your own coffee bar and expect to grow it to the size of Starbucks. And not everything Starbucks touched has turned to gold. The stories about its failed ventures into magazine publishing and full-service dining are as instructive as its successes.

But the experts agree it’s not too late to winnow some useful concepts from the experiences of Schultz and company, particularly when it comes to the value of the high-quality products, top-shelf employee relations and high-quality customer experiences that frame its mission. And if you read all the books and distill them into a single idea, it’s that almost any effort made to create happy and motivated employees creates happy and loyal customers. Says Moore, “That’s something all businesses can learn from.”

The Starbucks Business Model

Marmite the Dog

This thread really gives you comprehension problems doesn't it?