The 'watered down' Starbucks

So has the world's biggest coffee house chain gone a little too far in its expansion efforts, at the expense of making the brand look and taste just like everybody elses? Well, yeah - and Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has fessed up to as much in a Feb 14 memo to the company's senior executives. In the memo, first posted on something called starbucksgossip.com, Schultz says that the stores "no longer have the soul of the past" and that "some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about coffee.'' (He's just realizing that now? This guy needs to get out of the office more.) "I take full responsibility myself, but we desperately need to look into the mirror and realize it's time to get back to the core,'' he wrote. From the memo:

When we went to automatic espresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines. This specific decision became even more damaging when the height of the machines, which are now in thousands of stores, blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista. This, coupled with the need for fresh roasted coffee in every North America city and every international market, moved us toward the decision and the need for flavor locked packaging. Again, the right decision at the right time, and once again I believe we overlooked the cause and the affect (sic) of flavor lock in our stores. We achieved fresh roasted bagged coffee, but at what cost? The loss of aroma -- perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer, and once again stripping the store of tradition and our heritage?

The crowning blow may have been Consumer Reports ranking premium McDonald's coffee ahead of Starbucks, saying it tastes better and costs less. (Starbucks was described as "strong, but burnt and bitter.") By the way, starbucksgossip.com is maintained by none other than Jim Romenesko, who oversees the media blog run by the Poynter Institute. Romenesko is a rabid Starbucks customer.