The Brand That Burns: Lessons From Starbucks, Whole Foods

Editor's Note: Herb Greenberg's column runs exclusively on RealMoney.com; this is a special free look at his column. For a free trial subscription to RealMoney.com, click here. This article was published May 9, 2002 on RealMoney.

I said something at our hedge fund conference in Miami last week, right there in front of 100 people, that I've never before put in print: If I ever run into Howard Schultz of Starbucks(SBUX Quote), I'll tell him I was wrong, over the years, to have written negative commentary about his company.

Not that I didn't have my reasons: Starbucks, from time to time, looked like an accident waiting to happen.

In its early years, the knock on Starbucks was that it would suffer from the TCBY syndrome: Just as the frozen yogurt company got smacked by competition (as yogurt stands sprouted on every block), the same would surely happen to coffee. But it didn't. ...