Hey now, Wearers of the Green Apron! We know there's at least one or two of you dying to spill the beans about the uber-mysterious company-wide conference call scheduled for tomorrow. Starbucks Gossipers are guessing the call (emceed by Uncle Howard himself) might be about labor cuts or more store closings. C'mon Sbuxians! We are dying to know what this is all about! If someone left us the call-in number and security code in the Seattlest Tip Jar, it'd be our little secret. As always. more ›

According to Starbucks Gossip, 97,000 current and former Starbucks employees received a letter in the mail last weekend informing them that a company laptop has gone missing and the hard drive contained oodles of personal information, including their addresses and social security numbers. To assuage employees concerns, The Mermaid is offering the affected people a free credit report. One commenter on the blog is looking on the bright side, however. "Go ahead and steal my identity. You'll get your car repo'd and your salary garnished!" more ›

In another effort by Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz to "get back to the roots and the core of our heritage, which is the leading roaster of specialty coffee in the world," it's been reported that Starbucks will remove those tasty breakfast sammiches from their stores. more ›

Howard Schultz is shaking things up. According to the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks is testing a $1 cup of drip coffee in some Seattle-area stores.

The eight-ounce short size isn't on Starbucks's menu but has long been ordered by in-the-know patrons. Typically, a short, brewed coffee would sell for around $1.50, although that can vary by several cents depending on the store. Starbucks is also testing the offer of free refills for traditional-brewed coffee in the Seattle area. more ›

starbucks, howard schultz, sonics more ›

Just in time for New Year's resolutions, Starbucks added a new word to their ordering lexicon: Skinny Latte. That's official SBUX lingo for "nonfat Latte made with sugar-free syrup." more ›

Back in September, Billy Chasen had a mission: concoct the single most expensive Starbucks drink he could. The winner?

I told the barista that I was there as part of a contest to make the most expensive drink. She played along, trying to squeeze as much as we could into a venti cup. She thoroughly enjoyed the problem at hand (although other customers on line were getting peeved). more ›

Starbucks is going to slim down its drink menu, notes Starbucks Gossip. They cite a line from an AP wire article on recent Starbucks business: more ›

There's a classic science fiction short story called The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight that was published in 1955. The narrator of the story walks around a utopia acting like a huge asshole, disrupting lives and smashing up properties. He thinks of himself as the king of the world because everyone around him is too nice--like enlightened and tolerant and kind--to stand up to him. It's a humane and permissive society, completely free of violence and conflict. For some reason it's reminiscent of Seattle, but that's not why we bring it up. more ›

Howard Schultz is probably enjoying his first relaxing day in a while today after the Starbucks shareholder's meeting yesterday. At least, he finally had a chance to explain to everyone just what the hell he was talking about with that whole memo thing. You remember the memo--we're talking about the one where he complained that Starbucks had lost its way in the name of growth and had become a cookie cutter retail chain that was squeezing the romance out of caffeinated beverages. When he was dictating that memo it must have occurred to him that he'd be standing on the stage inside McCaw Hall someday soon explaining it. Yesterday was the day. more ›

It's like we were just saying about Starbucks the other day, only if we were the Washington Post instead of a city blog:

For most Seattleites, what Schultz called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience" is stale news -- akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet. more ›

the "sterile" and "cookie-cutter" nature that Schultz bemoans. more ›

Somehow an article about the IWW and Starbucks slipped through our comprehensive web of Google alerts yesterday and we didn't find it until today when Starbucks Gossip linked to it. Sorry about that. Baristas at a few New York Starbucks and one in Chicago affiliate themselves with the IWW. It's a story we've heard over and over for the past three and half years now and it's not going away any time soon, despite the union's failure to get much traction among the baristarati, a crowd that is generally perceived as more than a little leftist. Apparently there is some difference between an indie cafe barista and a Starbucks barista. more ›

Written by Howard Schultz more ›

--USS Mariner convinces us that Richie Sexson must go. more ›

Last time we reported on a Starbucks lawsuit, public sympathy was tilted in the caffeine giant's favor. Even the frequently anticorporate commenters at Consumerist thought it was stupid to sue them for "betrayal" over a botched email coupon. more ›

The official word from Starbucks is that they're cool with the Ghetto Latte. "Customization is a fundamental attribute of the Starbucks Experience. We provide condiments to our customers so they can make their drinks to their liking and we appreciate their patronage. We trust our customers to make the choices that are right for them," Starbucks Gossip reports. more ›

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so. more ›

The dreaded tipping debate has re-ignited at Romenesko's Starbucks Gossip blog, and it's worth checking out if only to realize that the debate is not how much to tip for a latte but whether to tip at all. It's obviously a national blog because in Seattle, where there are tip jars on the counter at Subway, no one would entertain the idea of not tipping for a cup of coffee for ten seconds. So does Seattle's tipping addiction prove our moral superiority over the rest of the country, or do we simply need to subsidize our baristas so they can live within 40 miles of work? more ›