<p>Y’all shouldn’t tell others how to spend their money. If someone wants to spend $5.00 on a latte, let them. It is their money. Oh,and it’s cheaper to buy Starbucks rather than to drink coffee made at home.</p>
<p>(cough sarcasm cough) ;)</p>
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<p>Simple. Mommy and Daddy give them the money. Gotta love being a white collar kid!</p>
<p>It’s also cheaper to buy an expensive coffee than it is to buy a glass of wine in a restaurant. Yet we’re not talking about a glass of wine as throw-away money.</p>
<p>Regarding the above, digmedia is now trying to put on a flame-retardant outfit before TheDad checks in!</p>
<p>I stopped drinking coffee from Starbucks and switched to Red Bull.</p>
<p>Well, my home is 26 miles from my office so I am not running home for my coffee break during the day.</p>
<p>^^^ hence the thermos. You can buy a nice Stanley that goes very nicely with a Brooks Brother’s suit. ;)</p>
<p>Peet’s French Roast. Strong enough to set a fence post in. Aaaahh…</p>
<p>^^^NICE COMEBACK, FUNDINGFATHER!!! B U R N. ;)</p>
<p>I am just joking, Barrons, really. :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/starbucks.asp[/url]”>http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/starbucks.asp</a></p>
<p>i used two, fun while it lasted :(</p>
<p>Well, I must confess, I’ve been a latte addict since we moved to the northwest 16 years ago! That’s a lot of lattes, by the way. At $2.78, they are overpriced, but it’s really my only vice!</p>
<p>I tried Peet’s a couple of times. They have a few stores up here now. I’m sticking with the mermaid.</p>
<p>Story I’ve heard is that Starbuck was started by a group of former Peet’s guys, who took the idea to Seattle and went big with the business model we all now know only too well. Peet’s started in Berkeley in the 1960’s and expanded very slowly for years; but recently Peets has been emulating Starbucks. So I tend to think of Starbucks as “Peet’s lite” for coffee, and Peet’s as “Starbucks lite” for business.</p>
<p>My understanding is that Starbucks was one store in the Pike Market when Howard Schulz and some partners bought it and took it big.</p>
<p>Starbucks History
The story began in 1971 when the first Starbucks opened at Pike Place Market, which is Seattle’s and the Nation’s oldest Farmer’s Market (opened August 17, 1907).
But at this time the company was a local coffee roasting facility. That remained their core business until 1982 when Howard Schulz joined the company. </p>
<p>He was the new marketing executive and began right away to convince more and more local cafes, upscale restaurants, and hotels to buy Starbucks coffee. The turning point for the company and the begin of writing coffee history should be one year later when Schulz traveled through Italy. He got inspired by the old Italian coffee bar tradition to serve fresh brewed Espressi and Cappuccini. He convinced the Starbucks founders to give his idea a chance and in 1985 he opened the first coffee bar in Seattle and gave it the Italian touch by naming it ‘Il Giornale’. </p>
<p>The new concept worked out, Il Giornale was a success. But Schulz aimed higher. He found local investors and bought Starbucks in 1987. That gave way for expansion and in the same year he opened new cafes in Chicago and even Vancouver, Canada. 17 Starbucks Cafes were established. </p>
<p>In 1992 the company went public (after they had already offered stock options to part-time employees in 1991) and stocks were now publicly traded at the NASDAQ (SBUX). At this time Starbucks counts approx. 165 cafes. </p>
<p>On March 7th, 2001 Starbucks eventually jumped on the Old Continent and opened their first cafe in the Old World: Zurich, Switzerland. </p>
<p>Today the company has more than 8.000 cafes in more than 30 countries</p>
<p>To visit Homeland Security on Nebraska Avenue in D.C., you have to first work with the scheduler assigned to whoever is the government exec you’re meeting, s/he collects your SS#, date of birth, DL number, and, if you have a non-U.S. citizen with you, they have to offer up their passport number, national ID number, whatever other number it is you have. </p>
<p>Then, the scheduler does whatever it is they do with these things, and sends an email or calls back or sends a fax to say that you’re cleared, and they provide directions to the facility and the appropriate guard station. </p>
<p>When you get there, you have to repeat the process through the first entry point, then, you’re directed to another building that contains a reception area of sorts. </p>
<p>You go through the entire process again, providing all the same documents you’ve now provided twice already, and then you wait, and then finally someone says you’re cleared. Oh, and you have to fill out some piece of paper, too, explaining what you think you’re doing at Homeland Security. </p>
<p>Then, you’re told to pick up a telephone that’s hanging on the wall. You do this; a voice asks you to state your business. You explain what you’re doing there and who is the exec expecting you. </p>
<p>Finally, you’re directed to the building where your meeting will be held: Starbucks. </p>
<p>I’m not kidding. DHS main hq used to be a Naval station, I believe. So there’s a million little buildings behind those huge brick walls. They took what has to be a barracks or something, and converted it to a Starbucks. </p>
<p>When you finally get to it (it’s not a short walk from the reception office, especially if you’re in heels), it’s sort of like a mini-warehouse. There’s a real counter and actual employees (of Starbucks I’m assuming), but, mostly, it’s row after row of cafeteria style tables and chairs, and people from private industry are seated at the various tables meeting with DHS people, AND drinking Starbucks. They let you use your laptop (though wireless doesn’t work). You’re even allowed to keep your cell phone, though reception is poor. You wait like 20 minutes, and your person shows up, and you have your meeting. </p>
<p>The only exception to the Starbucks meetings seems to be if you’re directed instead to the Subway restaurant a few buildings down - exact same process. I have no idea how they decide who gets sent to the Starbucks, and who gets sent to the Subway. I also have no idea what needs to happen before they’ll invite a visitor from private industry to an actual, real office inside the facility.</p>
<p>Peet’s-Starbucks connections</p>
<p>The first Starbucks was opened in Seattle in 1971 by three partners—English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired by Alfred Peet, whom they knew personally, to open their first store in Pike Place Market to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment. This location is still open today, though it is not in the same exact location it was when it opened. The original Starbucks location was at 2000 Western Avenue from 1971 to 1976. That store then moved to 1919 Pike Place. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet’s, then began buying directly from growers.</p>
<p>Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982, and, after a trip to Milan, suggested that the company sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. The owners rejected this idea, believing that getting into the beverage business would distract the company from its focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home. Certain there was much money to be made selling drinks to on-the-go Americans, Schultz started the Il Giornale coffee bar chain in 1985.</p>
<p>In 1984, the original owners of Starbucks, led by Baldwin, took the opportunity to purchase Peet’s. (Baldwin still works there today.) In 1987 they sold the Starbucks chain to Schultz’s Il Giornale, which rebranded the Il Giornale outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand. Starbucks opened its first locations outside Seattle in Vancouver, British Columbia (at Waterfront Station) and Chicago, Illinois that same year. The first Starbucks location outside of North America opened in Tokyo in 1996, and Starbucks now has outlets in 30 additional countries. Starbucks entered the UK market in 1998 with the acquisition of the then 60-outlet Seattle Coffee Company, re-branding all its stores as Starbucks.</p>
<p>Coffee Beanery Rules ! :)</p>
<p>Ok, Lee, Digi, Funding, and Barrons, (you’ve all gotta be guys!). If you’re up this way, a cuppa Starbucks brew on me. Can meet some great people in this particular Starbucks too.</p>
<p>Certainly–where are you</p>
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<p>You mean you actually LIKE Dunkin donuts? You must never have tasted a Krispy Kreme. To me, DD’s glazed donuts taste no better than the generic ones you can buy in a box in most grocery stores. </p>
<p>And there are a few DD’s out here in the west. I used to buy them regularly at a DD shop near my parents’ house in Salem, Oregon.</p>
<p>I’ve never had their donuts, but, DD coffee is outstanding, if you tell them to put a couple of extra shots of espresso in it. Plus it’s half the price of Starbucks.</p>