by Patrick Sills

Created on: December 18, 2008

There's no question about it: We are a nation of coffee drinkers. Whether we're talking about the simpler times of yesteryear or the fast-paced deadlines we strive to reach today, coffee has played a pivotal role by becoming for many a drink of choice. It is for all purposes the world's most popular legal stimulant. My apologies go out to our British friends who prefer tea. All the same, the coffee break has become a ritual for literally millions, so it stands to reason that somebody would come up with the idea to start a chain of stores to cater to consumers.

Truth be told, it all began with coffeehouses. Picture such a place in Greenwich Village. In smoke-filled, candlelit rooms, people would gather to drink this beverage while listening to folk singers and poets as they expressed themselves. Envision beatniks pounding on bongo drums in approval or audience participants snapping their fingers in lieu of clapping, for this is where it all began. Years later, bookstores began to add coffee bars for the intellectual and those who pretended to be while discussing a vast array of subjects ranging from politics to quantum physics. Somewhere along the way, a sort of pretentiousness took hold. Plain, ordinary black coffee with a spattering of cream or sugar would no longer suffice. Suddenly, and with little warning, these people wanted Cappuccino. Espresso. Exotic flavors. In a manner no less pompous than that of someone asking for Grey Poupon, these artsy-fartsy types popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

Enter Starbucks, by and far the most successful chain to accommodate this crowd. In addition to being placed in gargantuan shopping malls alongside overpriced designer clothing and shoe stores that literally ignore anyone over the age of 30, free-standing stores and sub-stores within well-established businesses were being constructed as fast as they could be built. A few other competitors jumped onto this bandwagon, but none fared as well as Starbucks. For a while, that is.

Now this well-known conglomerate of coffee stores has financially taken a turn southward. Some 600 stores are on the chopping block to cut expenses. Many cite the state of our nation's deteriorating economy as being responsible for the downfall of this empire. Certainly it is a factor. In tough times, people begin to make choices, and paying $5.00 for a fancy cup of coffee tends not to rank high on one's list of necessary priorities. More significantly, Starbucks rose too fast, and soon suffered from oversaturation. In some locations, these places could literally be found on every other city block, which lowered individual store performance. In turn, this placed stores within the same company in direct competition with each other.

However, in this author's opinion, the largest contributor to Starbucks' downward spiral is their inflated price structure. Profit is good and this keeps businesses afloat, but when prices begin to be undercut by outside competitors, where do you think the people will go? I was never personally into the fancy gourmet, flavored coffees to begin with. In fact, I think they taste like lacquer thinner. I'll take the plain, ordinary stuff found at Mc Donald's. Nevertheless, for those who are more adventurous, there are convenient stores; complete with gas pumps outside, which now have all the fancy gourmet coffees anyone could want, and at a much lower price. Even if you are a multi-millionaire who pulls into one of these places to fill the tank of your $120,000 Porsche, you'll still be happy to see that a cup of Latte is 1/3 the price of what it would be at Starbucks.

As for the rest of us, this goes without saying, does it not?

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