Readers Brew New Starbucks Angle

That is where over four dozen readers and viewers (crayon writers not included, you little devils) weighed in with passionate thoughts, sometimes delivered in pithy notes, some in near tomes. (Please know that though I get a lot of mail, I value it greatly and will always answer...eventually.)

Maven-reader consensus seems to lean toward the concept of last week's earnings comparison defining Starbucks as the new GapGPS. In other words: a company that had a good basic business before turning overgrown. Others caught on and offered the same basics. Even as the overgrown giant promised to catch their groove again by returning to basics, they were too unwieldy and, besides, others were now there, right where they used to be.

J.B. Hoover started by accusing me of over analyzing, ignoring that fact that I was, in fact, failing to analyze by turning it over to readers. But I'll forgive anyone with the courage to tilt against the coffee innovator while living in "Starbucks Central" as he calls his home of Seattle, Wash. To Hoover's eye, it's the taste, dummy. "Anybody with a discriminating palate will tell you this," he wrote, echoing a surprisingly large number of letter writers many of whom, like Ken Oakes, complained about the stronger taste of Starbucks: "how about a choice between a coffee so bitter you have to buy an overpriced cookie to help get it down or just a nice mellow cup you can enjoy without worrying about it eating the enamel off your dentures?" At least Ken doesn't have to worry about cavities from the cookies.