3rd From Sol

~ Learn from before. Live now. Look ahead.

3rd From Sol

Monthly Archives: February 2015

The Beginning of the End For Starbucks?

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Paul Kiser in Branding, Business, Communication, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Ethics, Public Image, Public Relations, Social Media Relations, The Tipping Point

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

*bucks, caffine, Coffee, coffee brewers, Coffee retailers, Oprah Chai Tea, SBUX, Starbucks, tea

WTF? Even Jasmine is disappointed

WTF? Even Jasmine is disappointed

There are always people who hate Starbucks. It’s easy to do. A person can find retail coffee brewing houses that make as good, or better espresso drinks, and the die-hard loyalty of Starbucks customers, like myself, can be obnoxious. Even the term, ‘barista,’ can seem pretentious to some.

Still, Starbucks has always done one thing right: exceed customer’s expectations. Note some of their highlights:

  • When coffee drinking was dying out with old people who were raised in the era of the peculator coffee pot, Starbucks revolutionized coffee drinking with espresso drinks that created a new generation of caffeine consumers.
  • When other food and beverage businesses were trying to get the customer out the door as fast as possible, Starbucks was offering free WiFi and encouraging customers to enjoy a non-work, non-home, ‘third place’ to spend time to relax and enjoy.
  • When the coffee/tea/snack menu was becoming boring, Starbucks re-designed their menu and name to become known for more than just beverages.

Starbucks has always tried to do a little more than their competitors, which is why they have stood out. 

But lately it seems Starbucks has fallen victim to the accountants and investors. This is to be expected. The average Fortune 500 or equivalent corporation last only between 40 to 50 years. Smaller companies have a much shorter life span.

“The average Fortune 500 or equivalent corporation last only between 40 to 50 years”

Typically a successful company manages become established and then after a period of time it catches fire. This is usually a combination of having a great idea at an unexpected moment. Customers often have a feeling of relief and joy associated with the product or service, a “WOW!” feeling. It can take twenty years or more for a business to have this kind of impact in a market.

If the business can survive the explosive growth phase, the next phase is coasting or reinvention. Coasting companies usually don’t make it to forty years. Competition is always ready to go after the market share of the leader who thinks they’re unbeatable. Anyone can copy and improve upon an idea.

However, the business that works to keep ahead of the competition by offering their customers something extra tend to outlast those who only copy them. Certainly, Starbucks fits this mold.

But at some point the accountants and investors start chipping away at a successful enterprise. They start by whispering, “We can save five cents per unit if we don’t do this. Why should we offer this, it doesn’t bring in revenue!” Soon managers are focusing on saving money to look good, not creating new sales.

“We can save five cents per unit if we don’t do this. Why should we offer this, it doesn’t bring in revenue!”

That’s when the wheels come off. As the company ‘saves’ money the customer begins to wonder why they do business with them instead of the competition. As revenue shrinks, investors get nervous, accountants ring the alarm bells and the pressure to do more with less boils the great people out of the company. At this point the fate of the company is set. The people left don’t know how to offer the unexpected to the customer and if they did, it would be against company policy.

Starbucks became forty on March 30, 2011. Today they are almost 44 years old. So where is Starbucks now?

A few years ago I noticed that most Starbucks stores took away all the trash cans from outside the store. Starbucks offers drive through service and outdoor seating a most of its stores, so it is obvious that outside trash cans are needed, but somewhere someone said, “Why do we offer to take care of people’s trash? It doesn’t provide revenue!” That was the first sign of a change in attitude.

This past holiday season Starbucks was again offering their ‘Sticker’ program for the holiday drinks, offering a free drink for every five holiday drinks sold. At least a week before Christmas Starbucks began running out of the holiday drink syrups. This was in contrary to past years when some of the holiday drinks were available until well into January. Why would Starbucks miscalculate how popular the holiday drinks would be, and how hard would it have been to order more from their supplier?

Of course, without holiday drinks, Starbucks saved money on the Sticker program. Obviously, an accountant projected the maximum loss of free drinks through the Sticker program and cut off the supply when the maximum benefit was reached in holiday drink sales.

The final evidence for me was subtle, but obvious.

Many Starbucks offer a ‘Puppachino’ (whipping cream in a kid’s cup) for people who have a dog. This is an off-menu free service and it caused our dog to go from barking at the Starbucks window attendant to quietly and anxiously anticipating her Puppachino. Today, our Puppachino was water in a kid’s cup with a little whip cream on top.

The simple change in a free service was a deafening moan of a company that is hemorrhaging goodwill from cuts to the veins of good management. No one would offer a cup of sticky, whip cream-laced water to their dog inside a car. It was a slap in the face of the customers. The manager is saying, “we can’t afford to offer this service, but we know you’ll bitch if we stop it, so here, pour this on your backseat.”

Starbucks is in full retreat and is following the spiral downward to be just another company that we will reminisce about in ten years.

Confessions of a Closet Wine Snob

09 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Paul Kiser in Business, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Public Image

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Tags

CA, California, Del Dotto, Del Dotto Historic Winery & Cave, Napa, Napa Valley, wine, Wineries, Winery

The wine cave at Del Dotto's Historic Winery

The wine cave at Del Dotto’s Historic Winery

In my defense, I didn’t know I was a wine snob. I thought that wine was a beverage that assaulted your mouth, overwhelmed the taste buds, and left your palate like it had just been mugged. I was happy to drink hard cider or craft beer.

Then my spouse suggested we go to Napa to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Then we visited the Del Dotto Vineyard’s Napa Historic Winery. Then I discovered I was a wine snob._DSC0055

There are some things you need to know about Del Dotto Vineyards. First, they are not trying to make wine for the huddled masses. Sutter Home, Beringer, Robert Mondavi, Inglenook, etc., are the vineyards that have massive quantities of wine and seek to put a glass in everyone’s hand. Del Dotto Vineyards are microscopic compared to the 800 pound gorillas of California wine country. Instead of producing commercial wines, they produce fine art wines.

Del Dotto also does their wine tastings from the barrel for most of the tour. They do have wine that reached its prime bottling date and can be purchased the same day; however, a guest should note that they are probably not going walk away with wine in hand. If you wish to purchase the wine from any barrel, it will be shipped to you when the wine is bottled. The wine we tasted was anywhere from two weeks to three months from being corked.

Del Dotto's sculpture at the entrance to the wine cave

Del Dotto’s sculpture at the entrance to the wine cave

Finally, Del Dotto has two wineries. The one in Napa has the wine caves that were carved out in the 1800’s. We did not visit the other winery in St. Helena, but it offers both barrel tasting in a wine cave and bar tasting in the winery.

Our tour included wine aged in two different barrels. So what?

It was that exact same wine, or blend of wines, but they were aging one in a barrel made of French charred wood, and the same wine aged in American charred wood. I enjoyed the wine from all the barrels I tasted, but I preferred the French wood barrels over the American wood barrels. It is a great lesson in how the barrel influences the taste of the wine.

What I also discovered is that wine doesn’t have to make you feel like your mouth was taken down the alley and violated. The wines we tasted were full of flavor, but didn’t rampage through the mouth, nor feel like an oak moth just visited your tongue and left a deposit.

Later we visited another, well known winery, and they paraded out their best wines that were as expensive as the ones we tasted at Del Dotto’s. All of them reminded me of why I don’t drink wine.

I am not a wine expert. Nor do I have enough experience with the Napa area wineries to rank Del Dotto Vineyards with the cluster of wine tasting options in the region. What I do know is that their is a difference in the quality of wine and price is not always a good measure of quality.

At least I now know that I’m a wine snob and I know of at least one place I can find great wine. 

Other Pages of This Blog

  • About Paul Kiser
  • Common Core: Are You a Good Switch or a Bad Switch?
  • Familius Interruptus: Lessons of a DNA Shocker
  • Moffat County, Colorado: The Story of Two Families
  • Rules on Comments
  • Six Things The United States Must Do
  • Why We Are Here: A 65-Year Historical Perspective of the United States

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