mbf tod@y

Starbucks in Italy? 10 years of hopes and fears

"Following its UK launch in October, US coffee shop chain Starbucks is said to be considering large-scale European operation, which will also target Italy. The business daily Il Sole 24 Ore said that Starbucks, with some 1 500 outlets in the United States, may be aiming for 500 points of sale across Europe, but they are likely to be points rather than shops, meaning machines at strategic places." (Eurofood, December 3, 1998)

Possibly, the first false-alarm about an alleged imminent launch of the Starbucks coffee chain in Italy. Starbucks did open in the UK that year and in many European nations, but not in Italy. A decade later, the chain giant has not yet annexed the Land of Persimmons. For some Italians, the Seattle-based corporation is the equivalent of the proverbial barbarians at the gate. For others, it is the equivalent of the US Army liberating the nation from an oppressive, fascist coffee culture. The saga continues.

Read more

The quest to make the ideal espresso

"The ideal espresso (according to the Instituto Nazionale Espresso Italiano) is a 25ml beverage extracted from around 7g of finely ground coffee, using water at a temperature of 88C, passing through the grains at a pressure of 9 bar. See, dead easy. It should be thick-textured, having emulsified many of the oils, retain most of the volatile aromas and flavours of the bean and be capped with a thick colloidal foam layer - "crema" - reddish, creamy and flecked. Each one of those factors is minutely variable, potentially causing thinness, bitterness, under- or overextraction or - the ultimate humiliation - a thin or patchy crema" (Tim Hayward, The Guardian)

Read more)

Starbucks was closed, but the Nation survived

"All 7,100 of the cafes across the country were closed until 9 p.m. tonight.

The company shut all stores at 5:30 p.m. to train 135,000 baristas to "perfect the art of espresso."

The corporate memo on the closure noted that 12,600 seconds passed without a Starbucks serving coffee anywhere in the United States of America.

The country hadn't really known life without Starbucks since the first store opened in Seattle in 1971." (Jill Tucker, The San Francisco Chronicle)

Read more

Bringing Your Desktop PC at Starbucks

"For our latest mission, three agents entered a Starbucks one by one with their own giant desktop computer and CRT monitor. They bought coffee and worked at their computers as if they were laptops. One computer even had a Wi-Fi card installed, enabling our agent to surf the web" (IMprov Everywhere)

Pure Genius (via Engadget)

Some Random Stuff Just Because

- Comics: Y, The Last Man - review (EW) I love this stuff

- Books: HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web (The New York Times)

- Wi Fi Coffee - Starbucks to Offer Free Wi-Fi With AT&T (SF Chronicle )- Stabucks is always one step ahead

- Hi-Def - Now Netflix abandons HD-DVD - (MCV) How Long Before Microsoft Announces a Blu Ray player for the Xbox 360?

- Games: Games are (not) Art (Gamasutra)

It's all about smell

"...Starbucks [will] get rid of hot breakfast sandwiches because they interfere with the smell of coffee" (Andrew Martin, The New York Times)

Read more

Cool Mix

• Music - Last.fm Seals Deal With All Four Major Labels, Amazon Reaps the Benefits (Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone)
• Movies - Andrew O'Heir on the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke (Salon) Sam Rockell is da bomb
• Booze - UK Study: More Successful People Drink More reports The Independent. Yeah, right... But that makes me feel better.
• Games: Earthrise, one MMO that looks awesome. For a change.
• Movies. No Country For Old Men has been beaten to the top spot at the UK box office by Aliens Vs Predators. Now, this is very, very scary.
• Games: Forget SimCity Societies and get City Life 2008 instead. Here.

Game Bits, Gizmos, and Other Stuff

• What's Inside: PowerBar Protein Plus (Laxatives, of Course) (Wired)
• Man Imitates America's Army, Saves Lives (Wired)
• NASA MMO? (BBC News)
• US video games sales hit record (BBC News)
• Stephen King on Kindle (Entertainment Weekly)
• Italia.it - a 45 million euros flop (Il Corriere della sera, in Italian) - the latest Italian fiasco

Starbucks to expand its empire "overseas"

"In retaking the reins of Starbucks Corp., Howard Schultz will have to fix a coffee empire that he says has become stifled by bureaucracy and has lost the courage that helped it change how Americans get their coffee. [...] Mr. Schultz said yesterday he plans to slow down the pace of new store openings in the U.S. and to close struggling locations. This year the company had planned to open 1,600 stores in the U.S. He said he also plans to improve the customer experience at U.S. stores, streamline management and accelerate expansion overseas." (Janet Adamy, Wall Street Journal)

Hurry up Howard: McDonalds' pwns Italy already.

Read more

Starbucks in Italy - the ongoing drama

"The Starbucks diaspora reached six more countries this year, including Russia and Egypt, bringing the total to 43. Among those countries where the chain is not: Djibouti, Mongolia, Italy. (I originally wrote "Jordan", but it turns out Starbucks is there.) Italians, as everyone knows, are fixated on their caffeine: the breakfast of champions is an espresso inhaled while standing up. It seems incomprehensible that Starbucks has not felt able to launch lattes in Livorno, or flog frappuccinos in Florence. Could 2008 be the year?" (Adrian Michaels, The Financial Times)

On The Financial Times, Adrian Michaels write that Starbucks bows to Italy's baristi, that is, the Seattle company does not dare to launch there because the cult of caffeine is an established dogma. More likely, Starbucks is just terrified of Italian bureaucracy, the worst economic conditions in Europe, and local - sigh - so-called traditions. As Michaels himself notes, "foreign multinationals have historically had a hard time navigating planning laws in Italy to build a network quickly and with enough scale.". I don't blame Starbucks at all...

Read more