If you’re sitting in a Starbucks right now, I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you. The corporation that has recently often been cited as a model of how to run a successful business just announced that it is planning to close down 600 Starbucks outlets within a year. My hometown of Gainesville has seen the number of Starbucks steadily rise since the first one came to town about nine years ago. Now I think we already have nine or ten in this only middle-sized (albeit university) city. So now the speculation is on: which Starbucks in Gainesville, if any, will get the axe? As far as I can tell, they all are doing quite a brisk business. Starbucks has stated that the most likely closures will come to the stores that opened 2006 and afterwards. If any in Gainesville close, my leading candidates are the ones in Santa Fe Community College and in Hunters Crossing (NW 43 Street) next to Publix grocery. But Gainesville, like Seattle, is such a hot coffee market that I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the Starbucks stores here stayed open.
And now I will submit an open suggestion to Starbucks. I like flavored coffee: not syrup added from a bottle, but coffee that is flavor-roasted. I can go to Books-a-Million or Borders and buy flavored coffee. But if I want it at Starbucks, I get the syrup and pay extra. If Starbucks is as customer-friendly as it likes to project itself, why won’t it offer flavored coffee? I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know that I would be a more loyal customer if it did. Is there some kind of snobbery among coffee aficionados that regards flavor-roasted coffee as inferior? Then maybe my money isn’t good enough for them either!
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