Caffeinated Ramblings

Starbucks announced that it is closing around 600 stores nationwide as it deals with an overabundance of underperforming stores as well as a constant erosion of its brand name. This has nothing to do with music, by the way, just an overzealous love for caffeine and a certain amount of hypocrisy in some of Starbucks’ biggest opponents as they watch the big player struggle through tough times like the rest of us.
First of all, I’m not a Starbucks’ apologist and I don’t have any financial ties to that company. I do pick up a coffee there on occasion, but thanks to a tighter pocketbook, most of my coffee is made and consumed at home.
And yes, the primary coffee that I do brew is some kind of Starbucks brand…but I also happen to dig variations of Dunkin Donuts, Caribou, and good ‘ol fashioned Folgers crystals.
There is no one to blame for the company’s seemingly retarded over-expansion, of which we in Iowa were not really a part of. I think there’s a few Starbucks in our area here, but I primarily drink from a local coffee shop called Coffeesmiths because they make badass coffee and it’s, literally, four or five blocks away from my house.
But in the rest of the state (like in my former hometown), there was no chance of getting a Starbucks so the brand was fairly novel. It was something to get when shopping in the big city. It was something to buy at the grocery store to somewhat reproduce the experience. In the larger cities there were stores within eyeshot of each other and even us dumb hicks in the boonies understood that this type of strategy was not very bright.
So is it right to wish for a company’s downfall because of their ill-advised expansion strategy? Do we cheer at their downfall because the mermaid lady is so oversaturated that we no longer feel hip with our double soy mocha?
There are those that will claim how Starbucks put a stranglehold on local coffee emporiums, pushing them out of business by means of sheer proximity. For sure, if I were a coffee shop owner and Starbucks moved in right next-door, I would most certainly take it personally and view it as a declaration of war. I would also take steps to make sure that my product is consistently good and priced accordingly. When you think of it, it’s not the logo and cute marketing graphics that helped push Starbucks into the stratosphere. It was because they delivered a good product that people liked and they delivered it consistently. Had they fucked up every coffee they sold and gave customers a product that varied from order to order, then those customers wouldn’t have kept coming back. I can think of several local coffee shops that I was supposed to frequent based entirely on the notion that they were local. But the thing that turned me away was the simple fact that every time I ordered the same goddamn cup of coffee, it tasted different each and every time. At least I know that my coffee at Starbucks is going to taste the same here in Cedar Rapids as it does in Chicago, Cleveland, and every other city that I’ve been to.
Here’s the other fucked up thing about spoiled coffee drinkers rejoicing at the downsizing announcement: Starbucks actually provides their employees with health insurance. Even the part-time ones! Absolutely none of my part-time employers in college provided me with health insurance and I’d be damned surprised if any of those equally overpriced independent joints provide their baristas with health insurance. My guess is that well over half of them don’t and with that being said, those layoffs will have real life repercussions that go beyond some hippie idealism that this national chain is the bad guy.
Starbucks also does a fair amount of local donations to charitable organizations, something that goes overlooked during this entire discussion.
Am I losing sleep over Starbucks closing stores? Does this really have an impact on me? Absolutely not. Which is why I find it absurd that there is a fairly large contingency that feels the need to add their own two cents to the discussion, basing their entire fervor over some fairly lightweight reasons.
To quote Sinead O’Conner for no apparent reasons: “Fight the real enemy!” and focus your soapbox towards those cocksuckers at Wal-Mart.