…but isn’t it possible that the time to demonstrate to save your Starbucks would be before it is slated for closing?
Customer movements to “save our Starbucks” have sprung up in cities large and small since last July, when the Seattle-based chain began closing hundreds of its stores. While online petition drives and phone calls to the company are common, public demonstrations are rare.In Fresno, Calif., an anonymous supporter created an elaborate display with a “Save Our Starbucks” sign plastered outside an empty storefront next to the doomed coffee shop.
At a Starbucks in Rockport, Texas, a customer learned that managers from the corporate office were scheduled to visit the store and announce that it was closing. Upon hearing this, the customer, Dee Parker, mobilized a group of residents to show up and protest the closing when the managers arrived. Starbucks officials found out about the plot and moved the meeting to another location.
Last month, the company announced that it was shuttering 300 “underperforming” stores, including the one in the historic Grand Garage building in Stillwater. It’s been there for 10 years.
Of course, in good news, the former Starbucks on West Seventh in Saint Paul just re-opened as a Dunn Brothers.
And that’s a net gain.
You gotta stand for something or you are going to fall for anything.
Starbucks withering up and blowing away doesn’t rate terribly high on the disaster meter with me. A number of years ago, when I was between jobs and struggling to survive, a prosperous cousin treated me to a deluxe coffee at Starbucks. I was appalled to see that she paid significantly more for it than my daily food and beverage budget. Put me down for a big yawn. A Starbucks closing somehow doesn’t have par value with a photo of a starving Sudanese refugee child. Maybe it’s just me and my blighted soul.
It’s not just you, mefolkes. Starbucks never offered anything you couldn’t get at Caribou or Dunn Brothers for less money and far less pretentiousness. Also, for years the Starbucks in the IDS smelled like they’d set a bag of coffee on fire in the back room and let it smolder. Yecch!
“Where have all the Starbux gone?
Long time passing…”
AssClown’s gonna have battle with the crack dealers in front of Caribou to secure a bit of sidewalk for AC jr. to move his shoeshine franchise to.
“angry clowns have drunk them all, long time passing, when will he ever learn….”
Not a lot of choice here in NYC, mefolkes. There used to be a handful of other coffee chains, many imported from other cities (New World, Seattle’s Best, Timothy’s), but the green mermaid took over the city ten years ago. But Manhattan could lose 50 Starbux and hardly anybody would notice.
You gotta love a company whose logo incorporates boobies! Their coffee can’t compare to Dunn Bros. however. Nothing matches fresh roasted, freshly ground.
Angryclown favors Peet’s.
I think the Starbuck’s managers missed a trick by moving the meeting. It would have been better to stand before the crowd and say:
Our company needs to sell 100 cups of coffee per day to pay the help and keep the lights on. We’ve only been selling 85 at this location. If you want to keep this location open, there’s the guy ready to take your orders today, and every day. You keep buying our product, we’ll keep selling it here. Sales go down and so does this store. Simple as that. Who’s first?
I’d love to see that on Channel 5.
.
The last Dominos Pizza on the Big Island closed down a few weeks ago.
However we still have three Starbucks.
There is something wrong about a place that can support three coffee franchises but not a single Dominos.
Well Dominos does suck, Terry. You can’t do any better for pizza up on the volcano?
Kiawe Kitchen in Volcano makes a traditional pie with a kiawe-fired brick oven.
But they charge $14 for a ten inch margharite. And they don’t deliver.
Nothing in between fancy-pants and crap? Don’tcha got any Italians in wife-beater t-shirts and regular pizza ovens? You should visit NYC some day. Our poi sucks, but pizza – we got pizza.
Nurse Bloomberg hasn’t made pizza contraband yet?
The Big Island has many world class restaraunts on the Kohala Coast and in Kona. Hilo is strictly working class people and college students. In a recent ‘Best of East Hawaii’ newspaper poll Pizza Hut won the prize for best pizza and Burger King won for best hamburger.
Hilo’s population is 80% Asian. It’s famous state wide for the most diners per person & the best local-style food. They just put up a Panda Express.
Our poi sucks, but pizza – we got pizza.
That’s true. And all over the place, too. Aside from Chicago, it’s hard to get really good pizza in the Midwest. And Chicago pizza is a different matter altogether.
There are three places I would recommend to out-of-towners in Hilo: Pescatores (classic Mediterranean cuisine. You can get pizza there but it’s terrible), Cafe Pesto (California style pizza & bistro) and Hilo Bay Cafe (fusion). When celebrities come to the East side of the Big Island to visit the volcano or make a movie they eat at Pescatores, Cafe Pesto, or Hilo Bay Cafe.
There used to be an art gallery/haute cuisine kitchen in Hilo called the Haikado. It was run by a wealthy couple from New York who didn’t understand that Hilo is not Honolulu or Lahaina, or even Kona. They went out of business and wrote a vaguely insulting letter to the editor of the Hilo Tribune-Herald complaining that Hilo wasn’t classy enough to support their business. They were right.
You do have good coffee though, I’ll give you that.