Where are all the Starbucks going? (Duluth, Coon Rapids: home, buy, closing)

[Hoosier]

The Starbuck's just off 252 before 94 closed last week. It was a great stopping point before going through the Cities. I've heard many other Starbucks are closing too. Anyone know what's happening?

[MNNative]

wcco.com - Starbucks Coffee Company Closing 600 U.S. Stores

Tough times.

[kuan]

After years of phenomenal growth, Starbucks' bubble has deflated a bit.

[ShiNnGsTar*]

Its probably because of Caribou coffee. They seem to have alot of buisness. Which is why Starbucks is closing almost everywhere. Thats what Im thinking.

[ozzie679]

Starbucks received thousands of complaints about long lines and slow service. Starbucks felt the complaints stemmed from a demand for their product, and not the efficiency of their stores. I assume the complaints were from major metropolitan areas, because the Starbucks in smaller cities, like St Cloud, have good service. Anyway, rather than improving efficiency in existing stores. They went the rout of adding stores that cannibalized on stores that were already profitable. Doubling expenses in a given market. Now they are picking and choosing which stores to close. Their aggressive expansion was a combination of arrogance and stupidity.

[What!]

Yep, Shingstar and ozzie make good points. A lot of people are choosing Caribou Coffee and other places. Plus, as ozzie said, they expanded too much. The customer service could be poor in many places. I also noticed they seemed to place them everywhere without any understanding of location, location, location. They placed Starbucks in inconvenient locations. For example, the Starbucks in Burnsville, off County Road 42 was hard to get to and squeezed between a Brueggers Bagel and a Papa John's Pizza. Why would people go thru all the hassle to go to that particular hard to get Starbucks that offers few parking spaces when people could go to Barnes and Noble down the street and get Starbucks there?

[newcastle]

I lived in Seattle for 7 years in the 90's and early 2000's when Starbucks boomed (they were on every corner) and they used to roast the beans right in the stores and the coffee was great. They had a unique atmosphere at the time, it now all seems tired and old.

They are trying to go back to their roots and be mor elike the first few stores in and around Pike Place Market which is why you see the Goddess Symbol in her full glory and the dull brown color on their mugs and cups.

We'll see if it works out for them. Caribou's coffee isn't that great either. I prefer Seattle's Best (One store in Coon Rapids), Tully's (Seattle chain) or my local coffee shop here in Duluth called Beaner's Central.

They closed a Starbucks off of Boone and 61 in Brooklyn Center. It was next to a halfway/boarding home and a car dealership. Weird.

[Astron1000]

Perhaps another reason is that people wised up and discovered that really good coffee shouldn't taste burnt.

[Jeanie Hoholik]

I stumbled on Dunn Bros. It's the best in my opinion. It's rich and robust. Once you've had it, you won't like Caribou or Starbucks. Not to mention, it's Minnesotan!

[newcastle]

Originally Posted by Astron1000

Perhaps another reason is that people wised up and discovered that really good coffee shouldn't taste burnt.

Burnt tasting coffee is a result of low quality beans. The darker the bean the better the quality and the more expensive the bean. The poor quality bean which is lighter and brown in color has to be picked out by hand is more labor intensive translating into higher prices for the coffee companies. Fair trade coffee is usually higher qiuality as it is shade grown and the beans are dark.

The coffee companies that just buy the beans wholesale without having the lighter beans removed taste burnt and bitter.

So, when Starbucks says that much of its coffee is fair trade is not true as less than 10 percent is fair trade and high quality.