One Local’s View on Starbucks

We’ve got a love-hate relationship with Starbucks and especially their current CEO, Howard Schultz.  Living in the heart of coffee central, Seattle, we have a multitude of choices(Herkimer, Caffé Vita, Caffé Ladro, Broadcast Coffee) to grab a cup of joe. I think most locals prefer to go to small independent coffee shops. Here’s a full list of Seattle coffee shops.

When you’re in a hurry, Starbucks is probably the defacto coffee stop since it’s practically on every street corner, it’s fast and consistent. In my office building downtown, we have a Starbucks in our lobby as well as a store literally one block away in any four directions from our building.

I typically go to Starbucks if I’m short on time and absolutely need a coffee.

The things I love about Starbucks:

• Fast-Back in 2007-2009 when the economy was not doing well, they always seemed to be shorthanded. Today the line moves fast and they seem to have the system down,
• Consistent-I feel I can count on the coffee to be better than average, the line to move fast, and the store to be clean and relaxing.  I have noticed that the further you move away from Starbucks HQ in Seattle, the quality seems to slowly go down. For example stores in WA, OR, CA, UT seem the best, then Midwest and TX are slightly lower, but when you get to FL, GA, MA there is a noticeable difference in cleanliness and customer service.
• I’m SBUX shareholder(cha ching!) and use their quarterly dividend to pay for whatever I spend at coffee shops around Seattle throughout  the year. Their stock and quarterly dividend has consistently risen over the years.
• Clover-In my opinion one of the most ingenious moves by Starbucks was to buy the Coffee Equipment Company that owned and manufactured the Clover machine back in 2008. I love indulging in a small batch coffee made on the Clover machine. So, so good.
• Innovation– From being one of the first companies to utilize an app for payment, their partnership with Spotify and  their rewards to order/pick up feature via the app, I have a real appreciation for companies that can think outside the box and be a frontrunner in trying new things. I also love the fact that they’re willing to tweak things if it’s not working out like changing their rewards plan from a purchase based reward to a money-spent based reward. It pissed off a lot of people, but it rewarded the right people, those spending the most. As an infrequent visitor, this definitely hurt, but as a shareholder, I like it. Their acquisition of Teavana and La Boulange were gutsy moves and have been met with good and bad results. I think their expansion of Reserve Roastery format is another genius move.
• The CEO-It could be coincidence but when Howard Schultz was CEO in his first go around, Starbucks was running on all cylinders. When he left there was a noticeable deterioration in quality and atmosphere in the stores. When he came back on board, the company is now back to running on all cylinders.

The things I hate about Starbucks:

• When we want to enjoy a really good cup of joe and not in a hurry I prefer a barista operated machine. Maybe it’s in my head that it tastes better, but there is a level of skill in grinding of beans, hand tamping the espresso, watching extraction time vs simply pushing a button and seeing espresso come out.
• Lack of reasonable priced food options– I think their food quality is good, but the bang for the buck just isn’t there.
• Pike Place Roast– It’s vile. You have other options in the morning , but in the afternoon and evening it’s the only coffee they brew. Yeah, yeah I know they will do a pour over on request.
• Unless you get an Americano, you only get one shot instead of two shots of espresso in a 12 oz cup.
• Homeless in the bathroom-Downtown Seattle always seems to have homeless folks hogging the bathroom. I go into the store with the mindset that the bathroom will always be occupied and not count on using it.
• The CEO- Sonics are in Oklahoma City! I put this squarely on Howard. Local government officials wouldn’t spend 220 million dollars to refurbish Key Arena, which had just gone through a remodel 11 years earlier.  Yeah, I think there are better things to spend tax payer money on. So what does he do? He sells the Sonics to folks from OKC, who of course move the team to, wait for it now, OKC!!  Truthfully, I’m not really a Sonics fan, but I think it’s fucked up that he sold the team full well knowing they would leave Seattle and crush the hearts of die hard fans, who’d been following the team since 1967. If he couldn’t afford to pony up the 220 million himself he should have never have bought the team in the first place. He bought the team in 2001 and sold it in 2006.  I’m a huge sports fan and I saw some great players at the Key Arena-Jordan, Payton, Kemp, Bryant, Duncan, Shaq, Durant, Barkley, Malone, Stockton, Hardway, Dumars, Mullin, Ewing. It’s a crying shame that kids growing up in Seattle will not get to see NBA games in their own backyard.

One last note on Starbucks: In my previous job, I was responsible for hiring entry level employees in an office setting. One of the main things that gave candidates an advantage over others is if they worked at Starbucks. I knew that anybody who worked at a store for an extended period of time would have customer service skills, could multitask, prioritize in fast paced environment and deal with high maintenance personalities, which seems to be a common trait amongst Starbucks customers.