Don't be these guys. Courtesy of Seattle Muni Archives We've all thought about it. You've got this really great idea and you are sure it would make millions. Only you're not sure how to go from that sticky note you jotted the idea on three months ago to actually starting to build a real live business. Plus there's the whole family/rent/mortgage/band thing that sucks up your time. And your job. Well, tonight, you can rub......

So Starbucks is again trying to jump into the hot chocolate market, following the failure of their indulgent Chantico drink. Today they start selling "Signature Hot Chocolate" (along with salted caramel and hazelnut versions). But a recent walk down and around Queen Anne Avenue revealed a number of other options for drinking chocolate. At the Queen Anne Farmers Market (which just finished for the season), we were sampling some of Rococoa Cookies when owner Rocky......

Showstopper of Seattle's long-running cabaret Angry Housewives was, you may recall, a number titled "Eat Your F***ing Cornflakes!" (What, you don't remember? Brain cells degraded by poor nutrition, no doubt.) Anyway, Starbucks is now seeking to recapture the breakfast market by offering freshly zapped oatmeal with a choice of fruit, brown sugar, or mixed nuts. All this turmoil in one store, all these decisions before 8 a.m.! Pike Place Roast not sexy enough for you?......

This is NOT how the new Amsterdam Starbucks will look. Courtesy of Flickr Contributor Amsterdam Asp Despite closing stores all over the world, Starbucks announced today they'll be opening their first non-airport store in Amsterdam in 2009. Sadly, the mermaid has decided not to go the traditional Amsterdam coffee shop route, which means no Purple Haze with your Frappucino, folks. Starbucks' official reason for not allowing its patrons in the Netherlands to smoke a bowl......

Howard Schultz has done Wallace Stevens one better. The poet found 13 ways of looking at a blackbird, but since his return in January the CEO has tried 14 things to revitalize the brand—including such contradictions as offering both "better coffee" and "worse coffee," and getting rid of breakfast sandwiches and bringing back breakfast sandwiches. (Does he contradict himself? Very well then, he contradicts himself.) Diana Wolf has compiled the (still growing) list ... twice.......

Remember when Starbucks asked the Rat City Rollergirls to change their logo? Most people we knew hadn't noticed the similarities—concentric circles, sans serif text, a couple of stars, and a woman in the middle—until Starbucks made a legal issue out of them. And we certainly didn't confuse the two entities. Yesterday, Michael Atkins at the Seattle Trademark Lawyer blog noticed that Starbucks had a July 16 deadline to oppose the Rollergirls' application for a trademark......

It looks more and more like the Starbucks we grew up with has irretrievably lost its way. Every day brings news of layoffs and losses, maps of store closures, tanking stock price, deckchair shuffling in the executive suite, and the frantic introduction of new products (banana smoothies, indeed). digg_url = 'http://digg.com/food_drink/Is_Starbucks_In_Its_Death_Spiral'; In the beginning, down at Pike Place, a regular customer would know every company employee by name. Now there are over 150,000 people on......

All is not well in the land of the mermaid. After weeks of whispered words like "bloodbath" around Starbucks headquarters and gossip sites, the coffee giant announced today just how large this round of lay-offs will be. Today's cuts will affect 1,000 employees, 180 of them located in Seattle at Starbucks HQ or the regional office. This comes hot on the heels of news that Starbucks will be closing 616 under-performing stores and that the......

Straight from the mermaid's pressroom, Starbucks has quietly released the full list of U.S. store closures. There are 19 stores in Washington on the list and 7 stores in Seattle. If Seattlest went to Starbucks, or if we weren't fond of brewing our own strong drip coffee, we'd be mourning the loss of our neighborhood store on 15th Ave E. Also facing closure? Starbucks stores all over the city--from West Seattle to Northgate Mall to......

As Seattlest predicted back in April (not by reading salmon entrails but by perusing the Wall Street Journal), Starbucks has unveiled a line of non-coffee drinks. In business-speak, it's a new "beverage platform," and its name is Vivanno Nourishing Blends. Comes in Orange-MangoBanana or Banana Chocolate. Viv--okay if we call you Viv? The baristas blend you to order, starting with a whole banana. So sexy, peeling a banana. Then comes milk (choice of whole,......

After announcing on July 1st plans to close 600 retail stores nationwide, the powers that be have released the locations of the first Starbucks stores that will close. None of the doomed stores are in Seattle or even Washington state. Heck, even Oregon and Idaho's Starbucks are safe for now. The closest Starbucks store facing closure thus far is in California, but there are hundreds more to come. So, breathe easy Seattle Starbucks baristas. Your......

Seattlest is still digesting the unsavory news of the loss of our beloved basketball team, the Supersonics. But rather than dwell on the downside, we are trying to keep our chin up and look for some positives. After all, it's not every day that we wake up to find $75 million in the front pocket of our well-worn jeans. We've been wondering all week about how the city might spend that big ol' chunk......

Things are not well in the land of the mermaid and her coffee empire. Starbucks announced a huge round of layoffs and store closures this afternoon. The coffee giant will be closing 600 stores nationwide and laying off 12,000 of its store employees. The 12,000 layoffs equal about 7% of Starbucks global work force. The layoffs and closures will occur between now and March 2009. No word yet if any local stores will be......

Tomorrow night, novelist Garth Stein (Raven Stole the Moon, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets) and his piercing eyes are making a crosstown trek from Stein's Mount Baker home to the Elliott Bay Book Company, where Stein will read from his latest book, The Art of Racing in the Rain (6/25, 7:30 p.m.). We hear HarperCollins bought it for north of $1 million, so Stein may arrive in one of those vroomy Ferraris......

Rat City Rollergirls by Seattlest Flickr contributor Scott Engelhardt Rat City Rollergirls have faced some seriously tough competition in their quest to become champions of the roller derby circuit, but the local team may be facing their toughest competitor to date--off the track. The current battle pits Rat City Rollergirls vs. the Starbucks Corporation in the legal arena, rather than an old hangar at Magnuson Park. At stake in the battle is no trophy or......

What? What'd we say? We just heard that Starbucks has chosen a book by Seattle novelist Garth Stein to distribute wherever its grande americanos are sold. Titled The Art of Racing in the Rain, the novel has also won the hearts and minds of U.S. independent booksellers, who have made it their No. 1 Booksense recommendation for June. See, the story's narrator is a dog named Enzo (an idea Stein lifted from a Billy Collins......

What was that about getting back to making the perfect latte? Starbucks announced today that they are debuting two new, non-coffee beverages. The company unveiled their plans in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. The new drinks you will be able to buy, instead of the delicious tasty disappearing breakfast sandwiches? According to the article, one of the new drinks will be a "smoothie-like drink made of fruit and whey." The new blended......

"Discovering Music" by Seattlest Flickr Contributor Seattle Rainscreen As part of Starbucks returning to their "It's the coffee, stupid!" business plan, they have handed over the day-to-day operations of their record label, Hear Music, to Concord Music. Regarding the change, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz said, "Now is the appropriate time to restructure our entertainment business to better align our efforts with our overall business strategies." Now Starbucks' partner in the record industry, Concord Music,......

Even though some of us around the Seattlest newsroom like to beat up on little ol’ Starbucks whenever the opportunity arises, today’s news that Starbucks' stock dropped like a hockey puck of used espresso knocked out of a porta-filter didn’t put a spring in the steps of all us Seattlests. No. Some of us actually own stock in the company (as do, we assume, some of you considering how many people in Seattle worked for......

Attention, Seattle caffeine addicts....wait, let's rephrase that. Seattle, what a week it's been for free coffee! First, Starbucks debuted a new blend on Tuesday, giving patrons a free taste which resulted in lines out the door at many stores. Now, tomorrow, McDonald's begins a four-week promotion called "Free Latte Friday." Go to any McDonald's in Western Washington tomorrow before 10:30 a.m. and get a free (Mc)latte. McDonald's has launched "Un-Snobby Coffee.com" and have recently launched......

It cannot be easy, being green, shade-grown and responsible. It cannot be easy, being the butt of endless Dunkin Donuts commercials. It cannot be easy, watching McDonalds roll out espresso machines. It cannot be easy, being Starbucks. Evangelist-in-chief Howard Schultz roundly denies that Starbucks is losing its way. "Our best days are ahead of us," he says. To prove it, an extravagant product launch of a new blend, Pike Place (named for the company's......

Hurry! Starbucks is offering free 8-ounce cups of the Pike Place Blend today. So says the AP: "Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz said the new blend will have a bold, robust flavor profile that customers have come to expect of Starbucks coffee, but with a smoother, buttery finish." Your free cup of coffee is available from 9-9:30 a.m. today, so GO! HURRY! photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr user scarequotes......

Because we haven't said enough about Starbucks this week, and because we haven't said enough about local coffee shops today, we figured we'd jump in on this story. Starbucks has to give their California baristas $87million (plus 7 percent interest). According to LA Times, some baristas could get $10,000. Apparently, the rule has been that all tips are pooled at the end of the day, and then shift supervisors get to take some of......

"I humbly recognize and share both your concern and your disappointment in how the company has performed and how that has affected your investment in Starbucks," Schultz told investors. "I promise you this will not stand." So spake Howard Schultz at the annual shareholder meeting. Then he announced the solution: Starbucks is buying Clover, a Ballard company that makes coffee machines. And they'll maybe start serving energy drinks. Not enough. Schultz--like Bush--doesn't seem to......

We're writing this a full three weeks after every Starbucks in the country closed down for "retraining," but before the company's annual shareholders meeting (at McCaw Hall, Wednesday morning) where the brass is going to spin the results of the, ahem, "transformational initiatives." Still, one disturbing preview emerged at an industry conference here in Seattle last week, the annual meeting of the Research Chefs of America called the Culinology Conference. These are the Frankenfood people,......

A friend of Seattlest sent us a link to Cakespy's examination of the history of the ubiquitous pink frosted cookie. Turns out "ubiquitous" only applies in the Seattle area: If you don't live in Seattle, you might not even know about this cookie (while it exists elsewhere, we've never seen it in quite the same proliferation in our assorted travels); even if you do live in Seattle, you might not have stopped to question why......

What's so great about the Stumbling Monk? The Monk isn't fancy. It's not stocked with 400 different bottles of beer. In fact, they don't have much more than 10 taps of beer. They don't have food. We're not sure we've ever heard music in there. Yet, it manages to be one of our favorite places to grab a pint in the city. Located near the Starbucks on Olive Way in Capitol Hill, the Monk......

When we used to work at the Starbucks in the Bank of America building (nee: Columbia Center), one of our duties was to bring up boxes of cups, napkins and other sundries from the storeroom located in the garage on level E, five stories below ground. According to one urban legend in the building, the lowest level of the parking garage was supposed to be the safest place to be in downtown Seattle during an......

At the Starbucks in our West Seattle neighborhood this morning, a (chronically inattentive) cashier and a (disarmingly friendly) barista had the following exchange. Guess which employee is which. SBUX employee #1 (apropos of nothing): I hope Starbucks is coughing up pizza tonight. SBUX employee #2 (with a hint of sarcasm): Uh, that is incorrect. But Starbucks will be coughing up a bunch of espresso shots. SBUX employee #1 (trailing off): Well, I’m going to......

During tomorrow night's three hour nation-wide Starbucks closure, local coffee shop Caffe Vita will be giving away free coffee and espresso drinks. Yes coffee fiends of Seattle--so that's basically all of you--that's good free coffee, just because the big chain that you feel slightly embarrassed about going to is closed. Lovely! Caffe Vita makes fabulous coffee at locations on Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Fremont, Seward Park, and south of us in the state capitol,......