Thursday, February 28, 2008

Genius, pure genius

Did you hear what happen Tuesday night across the whole nation...yes the whole country?

From 5:30-8:30 there was a lot of trouble. Feet were tapping tap, heads were aching and foreheads were sweating. Starbucks was closed!!!

NO!!!!!

Yes it happen.

6 weeks ago, Howard Schultz took over the reins (again) as CEO of Starbucks. Since then, he's been on a mission to return the company to its previous form. Tuesday, every store throughout the nation closed for three hours for "remedial espresso training." Or in Schultz's terms, "to teach, educate and share our love of coffee, and the art of espresso."

I beg to differ. This might be about a better cup of coffee, but there's a lot more to it than that, and it's pretty slick.

Shutting down your operation creates buzz. Apple knows this; they do all their online store updates in the middle of the day, and they bring down their whole site as the rumor sites go ablaze in anticipation. Starbucks knows this, too.

When you tell the world you are shutting down for three hours to learn to excel or to make changes, when things reopen, people want to investigate. They'll want to see if the coffee is better and what new tricks the baristas have up their collective, trendy sleeve.

Even more genius, Biggby coffee was offering free coffee at the same time......

If you aren't on the Biggby coffee bandwagon (you may see it as Beaners) time to get on.

2 comments:

Mike said...

I don't do Starbucks. It's good stuff, but too much trouble for me to go to the bank for a loan every time I want to buy a cup.

Instead, I order all of my coffee from Community Coffee (www.communitycoffee.com). This stuff is as good as Starbucks, and as cheap as the old A & P Eight O'Clock coffee.

Brian said...

The Old A&P - my mom always shopped there. That's where you'd buy the 8 o'clock coffee in whole bean and they would grind it for you at the check out aisle.