Everything but the Coffee

by Simon, Bryant

37. Aileen McGloin, “Starbucks or Big Butts?” n.d., www.ivillagediet.co.uk/start.cfm?code=400709.

  38. See blogger Chicago June B’s comments posted June 8, available at www.yelp .com/biz/go7OW0Psj51IIFQXwKcicA.

  39. Deb Richardson, “My Favorite Guilty Pleasure,” Red Shoe Ramblings, Apr. 10, 2005, http://debrichardson.blogspot.com/2005/04/my-favorite-guilty-pleasure-complete.html.

  40. Kimeldorf et al., “Consumers with a Conscience,” 24.

  41. See the chaos triggered by a Britney visit to Starbucks on a YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDP2R97HVU0.

  42. “Kevin Federline Accepts Britney’s Explanation of Lap Baby Mistake,” Apr. 9, 2006, www.femalefirst.co.uk/hollywood%20star/KEVIN+FEDERLINE-22820.html.

  43. For some similar thinking on this point, see Ben Summerskill, “Shopping Can Make You Depressed,” The Guardian, May 6, 2001.

  CHAPTER V

  1. “Listeners of National Public Radio,” Dec. 26, 2006, transcript available at .

  2. Helen Jung, “Coffee Is Grounds for Much More,” Seattle Times, May 28, 2002.

  3. Jeff Leeds, “Does This Latte Have a Funny Mainstream Taste to You?” New York Times, Mar. 17, 2008.

  4. For a more developed version of this argument, see Anahid Kassabian, “Would You Like Some World Music with Your Latte? Starbucks, Putumayo, and Distributed Tourism,” twentieth-century music 1 (Sept. 2004): 209–223. See also Susan Dominus, “The Starbucks Aesthetic,” New York Times, Oct. 22, 2006.

  5. The insider here is Bing Broderick. For a clear and smart overview of Starbucks’ music moves, see Steven Gray and Ethan Smith, “Coffee and Music Create Potent Mix at Starbucks,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2005.

  6. “A Latte to Go and a $4BN Turnover S’il Vous Plait,” New York Times, Jan. 25, 2004.

  7. This is noted by Kenneth Davids, “The Starbucks Paradox,” Coffee Journal (Autumn 1998): 72.

  8. Alison Overholt, “Do You Hear What Starbucks Hears?” Fast Company, Dec. 17, 2007, www.fastcompany.com/magazine/84/starbucks_schultz.html; and Gray and Smith, “Coffee and Starbucks Create Potent Mix.”

  9. Michael Booth, “The Starbucks Lifestyle: It’s Not Just about Coffee Anymore,” Denver Post, May 20, 2003. On the larger trend of the commercialization of the mixed tape and really of musical discovery itself, see Rob Drew, “Mixed Blessings: The Commercial Mix and the Future of Music Aggregation,” Popular Music & Society 28 (Oct. 2005): 533–551.

  10. Billboard’s Melinda Newman made similar observations in Mark Rahner’s article “The Savvy, Sultry Starbucks Sound,” Seattle Times, Apr. 17, 2006.

  11. John Carlin, “25 Million of Us Buy His Skinny Lattes Every Week,” The Observer, July 13, 2003.

  12. David Segal, “A Double-Shot Nonfat Cap and a CD, to Go,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 21, 2000.

  13. Carlin, “25 Million of Us Buy His Skinny Lattes.”

  14. Leeds, “Does This Latte Have a Funny Mainstream Taste?”

  15. In 2007, one-name artist Davido got thrown out of 203 Starbucks. He wanted the company to sell his coffee song “Java Jitters.” See one expulsion story in Jessica Smith, “‘Java Jitters’ Served Up in East Brunswick Café,” East Brunswick Sentinel, Nov. 15, 2007.

  16. Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” Dissent (Spring 1957).

  17. On the appeal of diversity, see, for instance, Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002). For more on how some whites value the presence of diversity, see Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 17, 18, 20. Mitchell Duneier makes a somewhat similar observation about white liberals in Sidewalk (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 211–212. On the related impulse of white guilt, see Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).

  18. Gray and Smith, “Coffee and Music Create Potent Mix at Starbucks”; Geoff Boucher, “The Grammy Prestige of Ray Charles’ Last Project Was, in Part, Brewed Up Alongside Cappuccinos,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 8, 2004; Steve Knopper, “Starbucks Brewing Hits,” posted Apr. 21, 2005, at www.rollingstone.com.

  19. David Margolick, “Tall Order,” Portfolio (July 2008). Note, by the way, that Schultz, as Margolick tells it, tapped Lombard without asking Magic Johnson. Apparently this produced some bad blood between the business partners.

  20. Dan DeLuca, “Coffee, Tea, or CD? Starbucks Is Jolting the Music Business,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 5, 2005.

  21. “Tower Records Files for Bankruptcy,” Feb. 2, 2004, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/09/entertainment/main599008.shtml; Kevin McCullum, “Sam Goody Closing SR Stores: Bankrupt Parent Faced Growing Competition from Big Box Retailers,” Press Democrat, Feb. 24, 2006. For the bigger picture, see Jeff Leeds, “Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels,” New York Times, May 28, 2007.

  22. BBC News, “Morrissette in Starbucks Album Row,” June 15, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4095358.stm.

  23. Robert Selzer, “Starbucks Refusal to Sell Springsteen Leaves a Bad Taste,” San Antonio Express News, May 12, 2005; and John Meagher, “Making a Big Stir in the Music Business,” Irish Independent, Oct. 13, 2005.

  24. “Company Fact Sheet,” Aug. 2007, www.starbucks.com/aboutus/Company_Factsheet.pdf.

  25. Quotes as follows: “vanilla” from Maxwell B. Joseph, “Music Review: From the Ground Up,” California Aggie, Sept. 20, 2005; “adult fluff” from John Coggin, “Group Isn’t Rising Up to Standards,” Daily Tarheel, June 2, 2005; and “mild intensity” from J. Edward Keyes, “From the Ground Up,” Entertainment Weekly, May 30, 2005. For more on Starbucks and Antigone Rising, see Knopper, “Starbucks Brewing Hits”; and on the band’s “remarkable” sales figures and limited promotion, see Gray and Smith, “Coffee and Music Create Potent Mix at Starbucks.”

  26. McCartney quoted by Kathy McCabe, “Sir Paul’s Flat White Album,” Daily Telegraph, May 31, 2007, www.dailytellgraph.news.com.au/?from=ni_story. On the ex-Beatle’s coffee preferences, see Jay Smith, “New Wave Coffee,” Adbusters, Mar. 25, 2008.

  27. Gray and Smith, “Coffee and Music Create a Potent Mix.”

  28. Mark Kemp, “The Wal-Mart of Hip,” Harp, July/Aug. 2005, http://harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=3163; and Hadju, “The Music of Starbucks,” The New Republic, Dec. 25, 2006.

  29. “Low Stars’ Self-Titled Debut Available at Starbucks,” Starpulse Entertainment News Blog, Feb. 22, 2007, www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2007/02/22/low_stars_self_titled _debut_available_at.

  30. Jung, “Coffee Is Grounds for Much More.”

  31. On the earlier rock history of the band, see Patrick Ferrucci, “Rising Up: Starbucks Deal Finally Makes Road Warriors Break-out Band,” New Haven Register, Oct. 14, 2005.

  32. Lisa Gill, “Low Stars Deemed Starbucks Cool,” monstersandcritics.com, Feb. 13, 2007; and Marc Edwards, “Starbucks and XM Radio Part Ways,” New Tribune (Tacoma, WA), Jan. 7, 2008.

  33. Mark Rahner, “The Savvy, Sultry Starbucks Sound,” Seattle Times, Apr. 17, 2006.

  34. “Starbucks Entertainment Releases Brazilian Singer/Songwriter CéU’s Fantastic Self-Titled Debut,” Starpulse Entertainment News Blog, May 9, 2007, www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2007/05/09/starbucks_entertainment_releases_brazili.

  35. Bruce Horovitz, “Starbucks Aims beyond Lattes to Extend Brand,” USA Today, May 19, 2006.

  36. Craig Harris, “First-time Writer Signs On with Heavy Hitter: Starbucks,” seattlepi.com, Jan. 11, 2007, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/299232_starbucks11.html.

  37. Harris, “First-time Writer Signs”; and Julie Bosman, “Disturbing Memoir Outsells Literary Comfort Food at Starbucks,” New York Times, Mar. 10, 2007.

  38. On the Kenny G release, see Hear Music press release, Dec. 20, 2007, www.hearmusic.com/#PRESS .

  39. On Lombard’s fate,
see Peter Gallo, “Starbucks Serves Label to Concord,” Variety, Apr. 24, 2008.

  CHAPTER VI

  1. Benjamin Svetkey, “Changing the Climate,” Entertainment Weekly, n.d., www.ew.com/ew/article/0,123709,00.html.

  2. Press Cone Inc. press release, “Americans Report Increased Environmental Consciousness and Expectation That Companies Will Take Action,” Apr. 17, 2007, www.csrwire.com/PressReleasePrint.php?id=8183. See also a suggestion from the business side on the value of going green, Wendy Gordon, “Brand Green: Mainstream or Forever Niche,” www.green-alliance.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Publications/BrandGreen.pdf. On the longer history of green consumption, see John Elkington, Julia Hailes, and Joel Makeover, The Green Consumer (New York: Viking, 1993).

  3. Amy Jennings, “Huh? Activist Calls for Starbucks Boycott in Wake of Shooting,” The Stranger, June 14-June 20, 2001.

  4. Sam Howe Verhovek, “An Unlikely Protest at a Starbucks,” New York Times, June 20, 2001.

  5. Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (New York: Picador, 2002), 340.

  6. Gwendolyn Freed, “No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 8, 2000.

  7. See “Coffee Consumption Research,” on the Web page for the National Coffee Association of the USA, www.nca.org. See also Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger, The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (New York: New Press, 1999), 156–158, 162.

  8. The film Black Gold cites these numbers for consumption outside the home. See also “Better Latte Than Never,” Prepared Foods (Mar. 2001); and Specialty Coffee Association America, “Specialty Coffee Retail in the USA 2006,” http://scaa.org/pdfs/news/specialtycoffeeretail.pdf. More generally, see Peter Wilby, “Why Capitalism Creates a Throwaway Society,” New Statesman (London), Aug. 28, 2008.

  9. Royte, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (New York: Little, Brown, 2005). See also William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish! The Archeology of Garbage (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001); and Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York: Metropolitan, 1999).

  10. Angela Balakrishnan, “Starbucks Wastes Millions of Liters of Water a Day,” Guardian, Oct. 6, 2008; and BBC News, “Starbucks Denies It Wastes Water,” Oct. 6, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7654691.stm.

  11. Katherine Shaver, “Pursuit of a Grande Latte May Be Stirring Up Gridlock,” Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2005.

  12. E-mail from Audrey Lincoff, Feb. 16, 2007, in author’s possession.

  13. For another consumer miffed about double cupping and other environmentally unfriendly practices at Starbucks, see Dan Teague, “Starbucks Contradictions Irk Caffeine Addict,” NBC Field Notes, Apr. 3, 2008, http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/03/854298.aspx.

  14. On Starbucks efforts, see Sonia Narang, “Carbon with That Latte,” Forbes, July 3, 2007; press release from Starbucks Coffee Company, “Summer Returns to Starbucks with Celeb-Rated Green Umbrellas and the Refreshing Flavors of Orange,” May 15, 2007, http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070515/20070515005463.html?.v=1; and “Green Umbrellas Stand for a Green Cause,” www.starbucks.com/aboutus/greenumbrellas.asp;; Anthony Breznican, “Starbucks Perks Up to Plug ‘Arctic Tale,’” USA Today, June 27, 2006; K. The Surveyor, “Starbucks + Arctic Tale + Global Warming = Corporate Hypocrisy,” Aug. 24, 2007, http://robdubinski.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/starbucks-arctic-tale-global-warming-corporate-hypocrisy/. The film, by the way, did not do well at the box office; see Josh Friedman and Lorenza Munoz, “Starbucks Movie Promotions Disappointment Bean Counters,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27, 2007.

  15. Environmental Defense, “Starbucks Paper Project: Changing the Way Coffee Is Served,” Mar. 27, 2006, http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentD=791.

  16. Melanie Warner, “Starbucks Will Use Cups with 10% Recycled Paper,” New York Times, Nov. 17, 2004.

  17. David Conrad, “Coating on Coffee Cups Puts Lid on Recycling,” Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 17, 2007.

  18. Trying to distinguish itself from Starbucks, Tully’s, a Seattle-based competitor, started to use more green-hued compostable cups and to take a greener public stance. See Craig Harris, “Tully’s Pouring It On for the Planet,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 18, 2007. See Tully’s press release on the subject at http://www.tullys.com/company/press_release.aspx?id=40.

  19. Environmental Packaging, “Starbucks Increases Use of Ceramic Cups,” www .wateronline.com, July 5, 2000.

  20. “Report of the Starbucks Coffee Company/Alliance for Environmental Joint Task Force,” Apr. 15, 2000, http://www.resourcesaver.org/file/toolmanager/O16F5708.pdf.

  21. See p. 10 of “Report of the Starbucks Coffee Company/Alliance for Environmental Joint Task Force,” Apr. 15, 2000.

  22. See, for example, New York Times, Apr. 22, 2007.

  23. “Some Baristas Are Telling Customers That Starbucks Cups Are Recyclable,” posted by Hopkinsbella, Sept. 22, 2007, at http://www.starbucksgossip.com.

  24. Apparently I wasn’t alone in not wanting to limit my mobility. Cornelius Everke, a Starbucks official in Germany, told a reporter, “I always drink out of a paper cup, because I’m more flexible that way.” Christiane Kuhl, “Globalization at the Boiling Point,” Die Zeit, Feb. 4, 2002.

  25. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Solid Waste Landfills,” www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/landfill/sw_landfill.htm.

  26. Terry Golway, “Like It or Not, the Postmodern Malt Shop,” New York Times, Dec. 5, 2004.

  27. Starbucks Corporate Responsibility Report (2006), 19, www.starbucks.com/aboutus/csrannualreport.asp.

  28. Brochure, “Starbucks Commitment to Social Responsibility.”

  29. Miss Barista, Dec. 8, 2004; “Starbucks Cups Made with 10% Recycled Material,” posted by Carlyn Jeanne, July 28, 2006, at http://www.starbucksgossip.com.

  30. “My Starbucks Doesn’t Recycle, Does Yours?” June 4, 2007, www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=1461. See also K. The Surveyor, “Starbucks + Arctic Tale + Global Warming = Corporate Hypocrisy,” posted Aug. 24, 2007, http://robdubinski.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/starbucks-arctic-tale-global-warming-corporate-hypocrisy/.

  31. Starbucks press release, “Starbucks Statement: Hot Beverage Cups and Recycling,” Sept. 18, 2007, http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=792.

  32. M. William Helfrich and Justin Wescoat Sanders, “The Coming Cup-tastrophe,” Portland Mercury, Aug. 7–13, 2003.

  33. Press Release, “Starbucks Announces Renewed Commitment to Communities at 2008 Leadership Conference,” Oct. 27, 2008. As part of this, the company trademarked the term shared planet.

  34. Howard Schultz, “Transformation Agenda Communication #13,” press release from Starbucks, Apr. 14, 2008, www.starbucks.com. On the larger practice of buying and what it does to politics, see Raymond L. Bryant and Michael K. Goldman, “Consuming Narratives: The Political Ecology of ‘Alternative’ Consumption,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29 (Sept. 2004): 344–366.

  35. This is quite similar to the process described by the theorist John Fiske. As he notes, popular culture can simultaneously act as both a site of oppression and liberation. See Fiske, Reading the Popular (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

  36. Harris, “Tully’s Pouring It On for the Planet.”

  37. “Frito-Lay Joins National Green Leadership Program,” Sept. 4, 2007, www.greenbiz.com/news/2007/09/04/frito-lay-joins-natl-green-leadership-program.

  38. Susan H. Greenberg, “I’m So Tired of Being Green,” Newsweek (International), July 7–14, 2008, www.newsweek.com/id/143703; “Have You Got Green Fatigue?” The Independent, Sept. 20, 2007.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. See Jones’s documentary, The Siren of the Sea, available at www.vimeo.com/adampatrickjones/videos/tag:starbucks.

  2. Tara Mulholland, “Conscientious Consumption: Ethical Tread Gains in Luxury Market,” International Herald Tribune, Nov. 23, 2007. For a couple of intriguing studies on what people will pay in the new economy for social resp
onsibility, see Michael Hiscox and Nicholas F. B. Smyth, “Is There Consumer Demand for Improved Labor Standards? Evidence from Field Experiments in Social Product Labeling,” unpublished manuscript in author’s possession; and Howard Kimeldorf, Rachel Myer, Monica Prasad, and Ian Robinson, “Consumers with a Conscience: Will They Pay More?” Context (Winter 2006): 24–29. For a less certain view of consumers’ willingness to pay an ethical premium, see Patrick De Pelsmacker, Lisbeth Drisen, and Glenn Raup, “Do Consumers Care about Ethics? Willingness to Pay for Fair-Trade Coffee,” Journal of Consumer Affairs 39 (Winter 2005): 363–385.

  3. Quoted by James Lyons, “‘Think Seattle, Act Globally’: Specialty Coffee, Commodity Biographies and the Promotion of Place,” Cultural Studies 19 (Jan. 2005): 29. For more on the desire for ethical consumption, see Keith Brown, “The Commodification of Altruism: Fair Trade and the Ethos of Ethical Consumption,” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2008; and Sankar Sen and C. B. Bhattacharya, “Does Doing Good Always Lead to Doing Better? Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility,” Journal of Marketing Research 38 (May 2001): 224–243.

  4. For more on the history of this idea, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003). See also Dana Frank, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Frank, “Where Are the Workers in Consumer Alliances? Class Dynamics and the History of Consumer-Labor Campaigns,” Politics and Society 31 (Sept. 2003): 363–379; and Cheryl Greenberg, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work,” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. Lawrence B. Glickman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 241–276. For more on boycotts, see Monroe Friedman, Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and Media (New York: Routledge, 1999).

  5. Carey Goldberg, “Songbirds’ Plight Starts a Buzz in Coffee Circles,” New York Times, July 27, 1997; and Alison Lobron, “Confessions of a Starbucks Regular,” boston.com, Dec. 30, 2007, www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/30/confessions.

  6. On the Starbucks world tour, see Paula Mathieu, “Economic Citizenship and the Rhetoric of Gourmet Coffee,” Rhetoric Review 18 (Fall 1999): 112–126.