Carly Simon's lawsuit against Starbucks was rejected by a federal judge for the second time last Friday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Simon sued Starbucks after the chain announced it would leave the music business shortly before the release of her 2008 album, "This Kind of Love," which fared poorly.

Simon lost the case earlier this year, but filed an amended complaint with details about conversations with Starbucks executives. The judge dismissed the case, saying Simon had waived her right to hold Starbucks liable for alleged shortcomings of its distributor, Hear Music, the Reporter said.

The whole-bean sales record comes just a week after Starbucks outlined a new strategy to investors, which features more whole-bean sales in grocery stores. Update: Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum wrote to say the whole-bean record was just in Starbucks stores, not grocery stores.

To: All Starbucks partners
Date: December 8, 2010
Re: End of Year Thank You from Howard Schultz

Dear partners,

As 2010 comes to a close, I want to take a moment to wish you and your family a happy holiday season as well as share my thoughts as we end what has been a momentous year for our company.

As many of you know, last week was our biennial Investor Conference in New York. Members of the Leadership Team and I presented, with sincere confidence and optimism, an overview of our business and our vision for the future, which included our Blueprint for Profitable Growth. Our more diversified, multi-channel and multi-brand business model was extremely well received, as reflected in the rise in the stock price and many analyst notes, which further emphasized our global growth opportunities.

Following the conference, John Culver and I flew to Mexico where we celebrated the opening of our 300th store, eight years after we opened our first store in Mexico City. The leadership team and I have traveled around the globe these past few months, and the progress that our International business has made in 2010 as it brought new discipline, ideas and leadership to local markets and delivered record performance, speaks volumes about the efforts of so many partners around the world.

The company is wrapping up the calendar year on a high note. Although still early, the Holiday promotion is going strong. Christmas Blend in both whole bean and Starbucks VIA® are extremely popular with our customers. In fact, day two of our 12 Days of Sharing, December 2, was our single highest day for whole-bean coffee sales in our history--a testament to the delicious blend our Coffee team and roasting plants crafted this year, and the marketing teams that bring the coffees the attention they deserve.

In the continuing saga of Starbucks trying to end a 12-year relationship in which Kraft Foods has distributed its coffee to grocery stores, Kraft is seeking a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to prevent Starbucks from behaving as though their agreement has been terminated -- specifically, meeting with Kraft's grocery store customers to discuss a transition away from Kraft.

"Starbucks is proceeding with flagrant indifference to the terms of the contract and customary business practices," Marc Firestone, Kraft's general counsel, said in a press release.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told investors in early November that the company was ending its distribution relationship with Kraft, which says the business has grown revenues from $50 million in 1998 to $500 million now.

Kraft says Starbucks must buy it out, which analysts say would cost $1 billion or more.

It says Starbucks made an offer in August to buy out the agreement, but Kraft rejected it as inadequate. In October, Starbucks sent Kraft a letter alleging breach of contract, which Kraft disputed in a letter on Nov. 4, the same day Schultz went public with news of the break-up.

Since then, there have been public statements about who did what wrong -- Starbucks alleging that Kraft hurt its brand, and Kraft alleging that the contract goes on indefinitely unless both parties agree to a buy-out.

"Frankly, after a successful 12-year partnership, it's difficult to understand Starbucks overt hostility and sudden change of view toward Kraft's performance," Firestone said. "Their latest allegation is that Kraft is not assisting in the 'transition plan' that they launched on their own. Of course, we would cooperate in a transition, if there were a valid termination. But that's the point; there hasn't been. For them to complain about this makes no sense."

Starbucks called Kraft's move for an injunction a delay tactic that will hurt customers. It has terminated its agreement with the company and will take responsibility for sales and distribution of its packaged coffee on March 1, the Seattle chain said.

"Kraft's self-serving and blatantly disruptive actions risk creating unnecessary confusion for our shared customers, and in turn their consumers," Starbucks said in its press release. It said it looks forward to presenting its case in arbitration, a separate proceeding that is not affected by today's court filing.

Now that Starbucks has said it wants to grow through acquisitions, everyone is guessing who it might snap up. Starbucks says only that its expansion will be international and in sales to grocery stores, which makes speculation about the chain buying Peet's Coffee somewhat confusing.

Other ideas:

• Dean Foods, per an interview I did with Smead Value Fund manager William Smead. It's cheap right now, and it sells milk, which Starbucks buys by the truckload.


• Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, whose single-serve Keurig brewers have far outshone Kraft's single-serve Tassimo brewers, to which Starbucks was tied before it decided to fire Kraft as its coffee bean distributor. Morningstar analyst RJ Hottovy wrote, "Although a potential merger is by no means a certainty, management admitted that it's been intrigued by the growth potential of this category and has seen improvement in the quality of Green Mountain's coffee assortment."


• A host of small food companies and distributors we've never heard of.


• Who am I missing?

In other coffee news:

• In the realm of real rather than speculative acquisitions, Cherry Street Coffee House bought Seattle Bagel Bakery, where it had been a customer for nearly 18 years. "When we caught wind that this 24-year-old bagel bakery had fallen on tough times and were leaning towards closing their doors, we had to do something about it. For the past 6 months I've been rebuilding the bakery from the ground up and as of the Oct. 1st, I own it," e-mailed Cherry Street's AJ Ghambari. Check out the video celebrating bagels by Mitch Mattraw at Cabfare Productions.
  

  Seattle Bagel Bakery from cabfare productions on Vimeo.



• A new group called the Seattle Coffee Society will hold its first meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 9, at Seattle Coffee Works on Pike Street across from Pike Place Market. "This is a club for coffee professionals and the most passionate amateurs," according to organizer Daniel Humphries. "We will brew coffee, look at some video from origin, and have a discussion on how different coffee origins distinguish themselves in the specialty coffee market."


• Ezra Fieser's article in last Sunday's Seattle Times looked at how and why Starbucks ships green coffee beans from Central America to the U.S. for roasting, then back again. The company told Fieser, "The challenge we face is that many coffee-producing countries don't allow the importation of green coffee to protect their local industry. Given that we blend coffee from 25 countries, it would be difficult to offer our wide range of products with such restrictions." However, neither Guatemala nor El Salvador -- the countries he was writing about -- restricts green coffee imports, customs representatives in those countries said.


• A judge in Illinois threw out a lawsuit that alleged Starbucks was to blame for a customer's tea burns, The Consumerist reported.


• Starbucks completed a pilot test in which it and International Paper converted used Starbucks cups into new coffee cups. That's one more hurdle cleared in the obstacle course toward a goal of having all the communities where it owns stores to be able to recycle coffee cups by 2015. The biggest challenge is convincing the recycling industry that its cups are worth recycling. (Photo of one day's recycling at Cascade Recycling in Woodinville by Seattle Times photographer Erika Schultz.)


• Finally, I'm back from vacation and assignment, and I miss the coffee and fresh basil lemonade -- like fresh from the cafe's back porch -- at Revolutionary Grounds Books & Coffee on North Fourth Avenue in Tucson. Its beans are roasted by Gadsen Coffee in far-flung Arivaca, which gets its coffee from organic, shade-grown farms in Chiapas, Mexico. "Old Bisbee Roasters are also amazing," said Joy Soler (pictured below), who opened the leftist cafe and bookstore two years ago with her husband, Paul Gattone. Their ethos appears at Marxism study groups and on the menu with drinks like "Hot Sasha," a thick hot chocolate with cayenne pepper.

  

Coffee prices have been high this year, largely because there is barely enough supply to meet demand.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, whose company buys a lot of coffee and derivatives to hedge against rising coffee prices, recently blamed the high prices on speculators. "There is zero, let me repeat, zero shortage of coffee and there is no demand problem," he said.

Analysts at VM Group, part of the Dutch bank ABN Amro, called him on it.

"It is not speculators, or at least not speculators alone" causing the price of New York arabica beans to rise 50 percent over the past six months, VM Group said, according to a story by AgriMoney.com.

Coffee supplies are low enough to keep prices high for a long time, particularly given rising demand, the story quoted Michael Neumann, chairman of coffee trader Neumann Kaffee, as saying.

"Prices over the next decade look like rising steadily... demand over the long term looks like easily outstripping supply in both arabica and robusta [beans]," VM Group said, adding that it would "prefer trusting the judgement of a coffee traded rather than a coffee retailer."

PHOTO CREDIT: ERIKA SCHULTZ/THE SEATTLE TIMES; Seasonal coffee workers unload baskets of coffee cherries into a transport truck at Santa Eduviges in Costa Rica.

Kraft Foods said Starbucks will have to pay if it wants to back out of a partnership in which Kraft distributes the coffee company's packaged coffee and other products to grocery stores.

Their corporate agreement is "perpetual," Kraft said in a release Thursday, and requires Starbucks to pay fair market value and possibly a premium if it backs away. The business has grown to $500 million in annual sales from $50 million 12 years ago, Tim McLevish, Kraft's chief financial officer, told investors during a quarterly conference call with investors, AP reported.

Kraft was responding to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's announcement earlier in the day that the coffee chain is ending its 12-year partnership with Kraft.

"A month ago, we informed Kraft that we plan to discontinue our distribution arrangement," Schultz told analysts during its call with analysts regarding strong fourth-quarter profits (which some take as another sign of economic recovery).

After Kraft's volley, Starbucks issued a release saying Kraft mischaracterized the agreement, including its term. "It has been, and continues to be, our intention to keep these conversations private. There is a specific mechanism within the agreement for the resolution of disputes. As we said in our earnings call, we will ensure that our mutual customers remain well-served," Starbucks said.

In other coffee news, before I disappear on assignment until Thanksgiving:

• Starbucks opened its first Central American coffee shop this week, in El Salvador.
• Synesso said its digital shot timer was a big hit at Coffee Fest. Most cafes use a free-standing timer if their machines don't have a shot-timing system, Synesso's Sandy Schneiter explained to me. A timer that's integrated into the machine, like Synesso's starts and stops when the shot is being pulled.
• Dillanos Coffee Roasters was named macro roaster of the year by Roast Magazine. The Sumner-based company, owned by David Morris, Chris Heyer and Howard Heyer, has 68 employees and roasts more than 3.2 million pounds a year. (Conscious Coffees in Boulder was named micro roaster of the year.)
• Watertown Coffee closed, but no one seems to know the details and I haven't reached the owners. Can anyone shed light on that sad event? They were apparently at Coffee Fest (per this Sprudge.com post), but I missed them. And I miss them.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a conference call with analysts this afternoon that it will replace Kraft Foods, which for more than a decade has distributed Starbucks coffee to grocery stores in the U.S.

"A month ago, we informed Kraft that we plan to discontinue our distribution arrangement," Schultz said.

He declined to provide details about why Kraft is out or who will replace it.

The news comes as Starbucks annouces strong fourth-quarter earnings-- a gain of 86 percent over last year, to $278.9 million on revenue that was up 17 percent to $2.8 billion. I'll be updating the earnings story here.

When Starbucks hired Kraft in 1998, it was using about 50 independent brokers to distribute products in 12 western states. "We are going to dramatically accelerate" the national rollout of Starbucks coffee beans in supermarkets, Schultz said at that time.

Now, Starbucks products are in grocery stores in 11 countries including the U.S. Through Kraft, it sells packaged coffee in the U.S. and Canada, tea in the U.S., and single-serve coffee containers in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Starbucks uses other channels to get products like ice cream, bottled Frappuccino and, beginning this year, Starbucks' Via instant coffee, onto grocery shelves.

Via sales totaled $180 million for the fiscal year ended Oct. 3, about 80 percent from the U.S.,
Starbucks CFO Troy Alstead told analysts on the call. The instant coffee is now sold in grocery stores in the U.S., Canada, Japan, the Philippines and the U.K.

The company also invested a lot of money to launch and market Via, so that the net effect on Starbucks' earnings was neutral, Alstead said.

Allecia Vermillion, editor of Seattlest, writes in Esquire's "Eat Like A Man" blog that Starbucks' newly remodeled shop on Olive Way is a step up aesthetically -- "once known in the neighborhood as a thinly-veiled former Boston Market had been transformed into a warm, urban oasis" -- but doesn't think much of its beer and wine list.

The "lackluster offerings" do not even include draft beer, Vermillion writes. "And if you're hoping to stave off the rainy weather with a nice porter, you're sorely out of luck: The three options on the list are all medium-light, medium-bodied, designed for mass appeal."

The Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen didn't impress her either, serving only as a reminder of Pyramid's recent sale to Labatt (via its previous owner, Magic Hat in Vermont).

Vermillion is kinder to the wines, but definitely not inspired. She predicts no wine geeks, beer aficionados or rowdy groups will frequent Starbucks for the booze any time soon.

I can imagine Starbucks being okay with that. If Olive Way is the test site that the chain says it is, then mass appeal is the point. It would be hard to scale up to 16,000-plus stores worldwide with a wine and beer list of serious depth, in numbers or flavor.

With local coffee bars lining up to sell booze, have you found any with great offerings?

The Moscow Times hopes Starbucks does not bring wine and beer to its stores in Russia, as it has to three Capitol Hill shops in Seattle -- part of a growing trend among Seattle coffeehouses.

The Times thinks that Starbucks' no-smoking policy, and the fact that it doesn't sell alcohol, are part of a social responsibility strategy and said it sets a good example among Moscow cafes.

"That strategy obviously makes the cafes less attractive to the more than half of the Russian population who smokes. It also eliminates the substantial revenue from alcohol earned by its main competitors on the Russian market, many of which modeled themselves after Starbucks," the Times says.

"Ordinarily, the social battle against smoking or drinking is not a business priority, but it is great when a private company helps solve a pressing social problem. Interestingly enough, Starbucks is currently experimenting with selling alcoholic drinks in selected U.S. cafes, but let's hope that Starbucks will not extend this policy to Russia."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Magic Johnson has divested his interest in Starbucks, selling 105 "franchises" back to the company, according to an anonymous source.

Johnson was possibly the only individual to hold ownership in a group of Starbucks stores. Unlike other fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Starbucks works almost exclusively with large corporate partners who run thousands of its shops in airports, bookstores and many markets overseas. The coffee company calls them licensed stores, not franchises.

News of the sale follows Johnson's sale of a 4.5 percent ownership stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, valued at about $27 million, the newspaper said.

Starbucks teamed with Johnson in 1998 to develop cafes in inner-city neighborhoods all over the country. At that time, they planned to split ownership of the stores 50/50.

(And back to the blog hiatus.....)

Starbucks introduces flavored instant coffee today in the U.S. and Canada, and will give a free 12-ounce drink to customers who buy any of the four new flavors -- vanilla, mocha, caramel, cinnamon spice -- from Oct. 6 through Oct. 9.

Starbucks has said that Via can reach $1 billion in sales, and baristas have complained at StarbucksGossip.com that they were pushed hard to sell it.

A six-pack of flavored Via costs $6.95 in the U.S. and $7.95 in Canada.

Update with blowback from my e-mail box: Jef Jaisun writes, "Gee, another Starbucks ad under the guise of reportage. And timed perfectly for the opening of the NBA season. Frickin brilliant. They should name their tip bucket after you."

Martin Coles left Starbucks in December to "pursue new opportunities," helped on his way by a year's salary worth about $725,000, plus a year of medical and dental insurance and job hunting services worth up to $14,000.

When he left, Coles was in charge of Starbucks' international operations, a post he held twice. In 2007, he left that role to become Starbucks' chief operating officer. A year later, he returned to the international job when Jim Alling -- who had led Starbucks' blockbuster U.S. growth -- left the company after less than a year of heading its international business. Alling is now COO at T-Mobile USA.

Seattle-based clothing company Tommy Bahama announced this week it has hired Coles to manage its international business. The company operates nearly 90 stores in the U.S. and has licensees in Australia and Dubai. It also sees opportunity in such places as Mexico and Japan, The Seattle Times' Amy Martinez has reported.

(Photo by Seattle Times photographer Ken Lambert is of Martin Coles at Starbucks' 2005 shareholders meeting.)

Two key ingredients go into a Starbucks drink. One is milk, and when milk prices skyrocket, so do coffee drinks.

The other is coffee. Now that coffee beans are expensive -- higher than they have been in 13 years -- the Seattle-based coffee shop chain is raising prices on some drinks in some markets.

It won't be specific, but gave these clues: Prices on the most popular drinks, including its $1.50 12-ounce cup of brewed coffee, will stay the same or decrease. For larger and more labor-intensive drinks, prices will rise.

It's unclear what will happen to the price of a Frappuccino, which is both labor intensive and enormously popular, generating $2 billion a year in sales.

Starbucks also might raise prices on packaged coffee in grocery stores, it said in a news release.

The price hikes come in response to high green coffee prices, which recently hit a 13-year high on the commodities market. Coffee production is expected to pick up during the next harvest, but stockpiles are so diminished that prices have remained high.

J.M. Smucker recently raised prices on its Dunkin' Donuts, Folgers and Millstone coffees because of the increase. Starbucks buys much of its coffee directly rather than on the commodities market, and it invests in derivatives contracts to hedge against high coffee costs.

Starbucks raised prices on some drinks, including Frappuccinos, last year, when it also dropped prices on other beverages.

In 2007, it raised prices across the board by an average of 9 cents because of high dairy prices. That followed a nickel increase a year earlier.

Who says customers don't make a difference? The outcry over Starbucks removing its "tall," 12-ounce drink size from drive-through menus spurred the chain to add reminders to menus that tall is still an option.

The reminders will arrive on Thursday, a spokeswoman said after Starbucks posted this "tweet":

Again, a glossary:

Short = 8 ounces (not on store menus)
Tall = 12 ounces
Grande = 16 ounces
Venti = 20 ounces (or 24, if it's iced)
Trenta = 31 ounces (tested in Phoenix and Tampa)

Melody Overton, who might know more about what's happening at Starbucks than most of its employees, passed along this item about a test in Chicago. At StarbucksMelody.com this week, she features a few other Starbucks tests, including a "drip only" line at another Chicago store.

Melody's friend David Stone, a Chicago attorney and Starbucks regular, snapped this photo of a new service at his local cafe that lets customers order drinks by e-mail five minutes before they arrive.

The system works like this, he said: Using a registered Starbucks card, e-mail your order and pay for it before arriving. The drink will be waiting for you at the hand-off counter with your name on it. Like the sign says, it's available from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

That's even faster than the Blackberry app Starbucks recently launched, which lets you pay for your drink by displaying a bar code on your hand-held device. With that app, you still have to stand in line and order.

Workers at the Chicago store told Stone that fewer than 50 regulars are using the service, which is in a small store inside tall office building.

WalletPop.com noticed it first third (after The Consumerist, which followed GinnySkal.com): Starbucks has removed the 12-ounce drink size from drive-through menus all over the country, leaving just 16- and 20-ounce possibilities.

While some customers have flashbacks to when the 8-ounce drink size disappeared from regular store menus, spokeswoman Stacey Krum explains the reasoning: "We'd heard from customers that our drive thru menus were cluttered and made it difficult to order. So we redesigned them focusing on making ordering easier by reducing the number of items and adding more product shots. Overall, we reduced the number of items on the menu by about two-thirds - typically going from 75 to 25 items. The items featured are our most popular items, including our most popular sizes - grande and venti. Ordering options are not limited to what's on the menu, and just as with the short size, drive thru customers may order any item or size of beverage we offer in the store."

Here's a glossary:

Short = 8 ounces (not on store menus)
Tall = 12 ounces (not on drive-through menus)
Grande = 16 ounces
Venti = 20 ounces (or 24, if it's iced)
Trenta = 31 ounces (tested in Phoenix and Tampa)

About half of the green coffee that spins and pops in Mark Barany's roaster in Bellevue comes from farms he knows. Barany (in photo by Seattle Times photographer Steve Ringman) has not visited them yet. His roastery and Seattle cafe, Kuma Coffee, are just a few years old and do not throw off lots of cash and free time for trips abroad.

He meets farmers online, and if their coffee sounds like a fit, they send samples. Then he draws up contracts to pay them and finds an importer who charges another 30 to 50 cents a pound to move the beans from Central America to Puget Sound.

It takes time and work, but Barany considers the effort worthwhile, because he is paying farmers what their coffee is worth and cutting out the middlemen.

If that sounds like Fair Trade, think again.

Barany and a growing group of coffee roasters have become disenchanted with the Fair Trade model and think they can do better. Known as direct trade, their movement is small and does not having uniform definitions or guidelines. Customers often have to take the roaster's word for it that growers were paid fairly.

They crave greater legitimacy, and for that reason a handful - including Barany - have publicly disclosed the prices they pay for coffee.

Check out the highlights of a brewing battle between Fair Trade and direct trade in a story I wrote for Friday's paper. I didn't include a lot of details and arguments from both sides, so please voice your opinion, set me straight, whatever needs to be done to keep this discussion going.

When Starbucks unveiled the new Seattle's Best Coffee logo in May, it reiterated what had become a matter of math: Once it finished rolling into 9,000 Subway stores last year, the other 14,000 this year, 7,250 Burger King locations and 300 AMC Theatres, its grand total would top 30,000 locations.

Well, it happened. Here's the press release.

Starbucks announced an application for BlackBerry smartphones tonight. There's already an app for iPhones, and Starbucks tells The Seattle Times' Brier Dudley that it may eventually offer apps for Android and Windows phones.

Check out his blog for details about the new BlackBerry app, including a list of the eight Seattle cafes with special scanners that allow users to pay with their phones.

Via, Starbucks' instant coffee wonder that brought in $100 million in 10 months and that CEO Howard Schultz says could hit the $1 billion mark just like Frappuccino, is expanding its flavor profile.

This fall, U.S. and Canadian stores will start selling vanilla, mocha, caramel and cinnamon spice flavors of Via, which come in small packets for single servings of instant coffee.

Flavored Via follows Starbucks' first steps into flavored coffee beans (vanilla, caramel, cinnamon) in June.

Sixty percent of Starbucks customers drink coffee with flavor, Chief Marketing Officer Annie Young-Scrivner said in a press release. That includes syrups, sauces, sprinkles, flavored creamers -- and the whopping Frappuccino market.

The same release says about 11 percent of U.S. households buy flavored ground and instant coffees, a market that A.C. Nielsen estimates is worth $377 million ($112 million instant, $265 million roasted/ground). That's a sliver of the $20 billion instant coffee market worldwide.

Kathy Bell, a nine-year Starbucks employee who was laid off in 2008, is among thousands of people reaching the end of their unemployment benefits, Seattle Weekly reports.

The country now has 14.6 million unemployed workers, including many laid off by Starbucks early in the recession. 247WallSt.com lists the coffee shop chain as a "Layoff King."

Its #12 ranking is based on what looks like a low number to me -- 21,316 jobs slashed since December 2007. Starbucks' SEC filings show it eliminated 34,000 jobs from September 2008 to September 2009, about 32,000 of them in the U.S. It now has 142,000 workers.

People like Bell are scared. She's living off credit cards and hoping to qualify for disability payments from Social Security, according to the Seattle Weekly article by Laura Onstot -- who also wrote a coffee story about a lawsuit involving a dispute over Deadliest Catch Phil Harris' coffee enterprise.

StarbucksGossip.com commenters are arguing about tactics used by the Industrial Workers of the World to organize Starbucks employees, an effort that's been going on for years with mixed success.

The IWW -- the folks who brought us the 8-hour work day -- will not say how many Starbucks workers have joined. It's had legal victories against Starbucks, which IWW organizer James Connolly alludes to at StarbucksGossip.com.

The issue: Some commenters said Starbucks is likely to fire IWW organizer Tyler Swain, an Omaha barista who commented in a Reuters story last week that he has given customers free drinks to boost sales of the instant coffee Via and been coached to encourage others to do the same.

Connolly commented that Starbucks won't fire Swain unless it wants a legal battle.

Now comes the new part, to me anyway: Sleepinggoodtonite asks Connolly, in part, "Do you know your followers are trying to recruit members on company time, and on company property? YOU CAN'T DO THAT. If you're going to try to organize, do it the legal way. Don't try to intimidate people into belonging, don't publish people's cell phone numbers on facebook. Don't have total strangers call the store and demand that union literature be put back up on the bulletin board, quoting a section of the NLRA that doesn't say what you interpret it to say. Don't threaten people!! Do it the right way."

Connolly's come-back, in part: "You are also to be applauded in noticing that we do not have a collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks. This is for a mix of reasons, not the least of which is we haven't reached a critical mass of membership yet within the company. This does not mean, however, that we do not have the right to post union material in stores with a union presence. We've won multiple NLRB cases against the company for taking down union material that we have posted."

He says no one has been threatened or intimidated into joining the IWW and a lot of other things. Check out the rest of the exchange, which has been going for several days.

"A fierce public debate has broken out over plans to build a Starbucks coffeehouse two blocks from Boston Harbor. The harbor is where the 1773 Boston Tea Party took place, when colonists spilled a shipload of British tea to protest high taxes," freelancer Ben Krull joshed for The Seattle Times' opinion page on Friday.

"Opponents of the coffeehouse see it as a provocation, meant to symbolize coffee's triumph over tea as America's favorite morning drink. 'This is like placing a Yankees souvenir stand next to Fenway Park,' an elderly man said at a recent town-hall meeting."

If you missed it, check out the rest of Krull's satire.

The biggest recycling challenge for the world's largest coffee shop chain is convincing mills to accept more paper coffee cups, which most places put in landfill and a handful -- including Seattle and Bellingham-- recycle or compost.

Starbucks' goal is to have all the communities where it owns shops communities be able to recycle coffee cups by 2015 -- a very big deal for a company that goes through 3 billion paper cups (and 1 billion plastic ones) a year.

Mills don't love the cups, because they come with plastic -- sometimes lids and always plastic lining that keeps them from being soaked.

Here's a story I wrote about it for yesterday's paper, including thoughts from a recycled material provider to China, the biggest buyer of recycled "mixed paper," which is where coffee cups end up.

Thanks to readers who e-mailed with more information:

• Someone's written a book about 101 things to do with a paper cup -- ideas for the many people who still can't recycle or compost them.


• Nancy Faber from Lynden Christian School north of Bellingham said its students are heavily involved in sending Starbucks coffee bean bags to TerraCycle in New Jersey, which pays for the shipping and turns them into items for sale like shopping bags.

It's been a Starbucks-heavy couple of weeks, between news the company generates and news that others report about it. Here are a few items I haven't posted individually but which are coming across the wires and shouldn't be ignored (with apologies to those of you who crave non-Starbucks news):

• Starbucks bought out the company that operated its 23 shops in Brazil and will run that business directly from now on, it said in a release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• Starbucks will start selling the instant coffee Via in the Philippines in September, it said in a release. It has more than 160 stores there. Via is currently sold in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Japan.
• Starbucks will bring single-origin coffees -- meaning coffee grown in a single region, rather than blends -- to Seattle, Portland, and other select markets beginning Aug. 31, it said in a release. Sounding a lot like its former "Black Apron" beans, the "Starbucks Reserve" selections will debut with Galapagos San Cristobal sold by the cup (starting at $2.95 through Clover machines or pour-overs) and in half-pound packages ($12.50 for the Galapagos). It's available sold out online now at www.starbucksstore.com and can be reserved at participating stores beginning on Saturday. Preview tastings will take place at those stores on Aug. 28. The "Starbucks Reserve" stores can be found on Starbucks' online store locator. Offerings will rotate, and beginning in October will include Aged Sulawesi Kalosi, El Salvador Montecarlos Estate Pacamara, Nicaragua Corcasan Fair Trade Certified and Brazil Sul de Minas Peaberry.
• Piper Jaffray raised its price target for Starbucks' stock to $34 from $32, StreetInsider.com reported. The firm was particularly psyched about Starbucks' packaged goods, which include grocery sales of Via and bottled Frappuccino. Shares closed down 46 cents today at $24.04.

Starbucks plans to drive coffee shop customers to buy products in supermarkets, and vice versa, through its rewards program, CEO Howard Schultz told Julie Jargon at The Wall Street Journal. The rewards program was recently revamped but so far has nothing involving supermarkets.

It also plans to add more products in its Via instant coffee line, as well as new Tazo tea and Seattle's Best Coffee products, he said. And it will begin sampling new products at Starbucks shops that are located and run by grocery and Target stores, hoping customers will buy the products while they're there.

It isn't pretty, but customers are using the coffee-mobile and plywood deck at Starbucks' Olive Way store on Capitol Hill, which will reopen this fall as the first official Starbucks to sell beer and wine. Its other two stores that sell beer and wine are called Roy Street Coffee & Tea and 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, both on Capitol Hill.

Here are a few pictures I grabbed while I was in the area yesterday:

Recent spikes in the commodity price of coffee have not lowered Starbucks' profit expectations of just more than $1 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends in September, the company said in a rare release addressing coffee bean prices. That's more than twice what it earned in each of the past two fiscal years.

Starbucks will "absorb" almost $30 million in additional commodity costs this year, it said, most of it because of rising coffee prices. Another commodity that Starbucks buys is milk, and its prices have affected profits in the past but are not spiking now the way coffee is.

Starbucks pointed out that it buys coffee from multiple regions and has the ability to "effectively mitigate a portion of the relative short-term fluctuations inherent in today's coffee market." Although that's not clear language, Starbucks might be talking about derivatives that it uses to hedge against changes in coffee prices.

The New York Post and Vanity Fair, among others, are spilling ink on an incident in which an English professor says she was hauled out of a Manhattan Starbucks after refusing to specify whether she wanted butter or cheese on her bagel. A Starbucks worker told the Post she called a barista a bad name.

Seriously. It must be a slow news week.

• Standard & Poor's Ratings Services upgraded Starbucks' debt to BBB+ from BBB -- which is just below A -- this week, MarketWatch.com reported. S&P expects sustained strength through the end of the year, tempered by weak revenue growth in the sluggish U.S. economy. S&P rates debt, not stock, and did not cover itself in glory in the run-up to the recession, but they're almost all we have.
• The Wall Street Journal takes a look at equipment for making cold coffee.
• The Korea Times goes after Starbucks for using so many disposable cups (it says 4 billion a year; Starbucks has said 3 billion) and not putting calorie counts on its Korean menus. Meanwhile, The New York Times points out the eco-unfriendliness of those single-use coffee pods from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters of Vermont. The pods, also called K-Cups, are neither recyclable nor biodegradable.
• The San Jose company mypressi, which makes a hand-held, manual espresso maker called the mypressi TWIST that's popular with baristas, has created a program through which anyone who buys a $189 TWIST can pay $10 more to donate a TWIST to a coffee farmer. A big problem for some small-scale coffee farmers is that they don't have the equipment to taste their own coffee, and thereby improve it and market it to high-end coffee clients. Mypressi's web site has more information about the "Give One, Get One" program.
• Albert Barrientos, a 65-year veteran of the coffee industry, died in New Orleans last week. He retired in 2005 after a long career with Westfeldt Brothers, which bills itself as the oldest green coffee importer in the U.S. He had been president of the Green Coffee Association of New Orleans, the New Orleans Board of Trade and The Southern Coffee Association, as well as a board member of the National Coffee Association and chairman of its Armed Services Committee (who knew?).
• Finally, StarbucksGossip.com dug up an interesting press release about Starbucks' 2007 effort to partner with Apple in offering iTunes to coffee shop customers across the country. It fizzled, and this fall Starbucks plans to unveil a similar but expanded home-page feature for its WiFi customers in partnership with Yahoo.

When Starbucks unveils its digital network this fall -- the page customers will see when they use its free WiFi -- they will get free content from iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and Zagat. That much we knew.

Today, Starbucks added a few more names to the list: Rodale for health news, Nick Jr. Boost for children's learning, and DonorsChoose.org for matching customers with public school classrooms who need financial support.

You know those righteous wooden tables that keep showing up at Starbucks shops around Seattle? The ones quaintly referred to as "salvaged wood" from a tree blown down in a storm?

The guys who carve them, Seth Meyer and John Wells, were profiled in The New York Times on Sunday.

To check out some tables in person, visit Starbucks at First and Pike, University Village and the top of Queen Anne. I meant to have a photo for you by now, but have been busy writing about voter measures to privatize the liquor business and Jones Soda's hopes for WhoopAss.

Starbucks spent $180,000 on lobbying in the second quarter, the Associated Press reports, the same as it spent in the first quarter, according to Business Week.

That tally includes payments by Starbucks lobbyist Lori Otto Punke, but does not include $100,000 to the law firm K&L Gates (also known as Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis), according to OpenSecrets.org. [Correction 2:25 p.m.: Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum said the $100,000 payment to K&L Gates is included in Starbucks' overall $360,000 expenditure. The payments are filed separately with the U.S. House of Representatives. That also changes the totals below, which came from OpenSecrets.org:]

At this rate, it will spend $920,000 $720,000 on lobbying this year, up from $740,000 $520,000 last year.

Starbucks' lobbying in the second quarter focused on tax proposals regarding the treatment of foreign income, efforts to preserve the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), legislation regarding food safety, menu labeling and climate change, and efforts to reduce import duties, according to a filing with the U.S. House of Representatives. Starbucks' payments to K&L Gates were for lobbying around food safety and menu labeling, according to another filing.

[Further explanation from Starbucks' Stacey Krum: The $180,000 paid in the second quarter "includes employee compensation (meaning not just the cost of Lori's time but any partner who directly interacts with policymakers on behalf of the company), overhead, professional fees (K&L Gates), and the portion of the membership dues we pay to associations we belong to that support lobbying activities."]

McDonald's started offering free WiFi in January. Starbucks did it last month, although not in airports, book shops and grocery stores.

If they're zigging, then it must be time for independent cafes to zag. Many have offered free WiFi for years, but there's a budding backlash, according to a Los Angeles Times Sunday story, "Coffee shops are taking Wi-Fi off the menu." Not just free WiFi, but all WiFi.

The article mentions Victrola Coffee & Art in Seattle as "one of the first cafes to disconnect Wi-Fi in 2005 after the owners noticed that friends were no longer talking and strangers were no longer meeting."

Tonya Wagner, Victrola's retail coordinator, said there was a New York Times article when the cafe unplugged on weekends in 2005. A couple years later, it offered WiFi on weekends again. Then it stopped. About six months ago, the juice quietly came back on, but "not that many people have realized it."

Victrola never turned off the WiFi on weekdays, she said.

"If it becomes an Internet library, that's not fun for anyone and kind of ruins the atmosphere," Wagner said. "If we could find a balance, that would be the ideal situation."

She likes Espresso Vivace's recent solution of allowing WiFi only in a separate community room with the door shut, at least on weekends, but said Victrola doesn't have that kind of separate space right now. "I see that sort of mixed space as the ideal, but how you get to that mixed space can be really tricky."

Wagner and Jason Simon, a social media expert and CaffeinatedConversations.com blogger, were interviewed today by KING-5, which is expected to have a local spin on the WiFi story at 6:30 p.m. Update: Here's the KING-5 clip, "WiFi being eliminated at some Seattle coffee shops."

Starbucks' Howard Schultz ranks as the 20th most highly paid CEO during the past decade, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

His pay of $358.4 million put him in the company of former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill and Target CEO Robert Ulrich. All but $30 million came from stock option awards, which have become a major part of CEO pay.

As my colleague Eric Pryne reported in June, Schultz was the highest paid CEO in the Northwest last year, earning nearly $15 million -- and possibly more if its stock continues to climb.

Anyone who bashes on Starbucks for dark-roasting its coffee will have to back up a step. The company has started testing summer drinks with green, unroasted coffee in San Diego, Reuters reports.

Called "Refreshers," they cost $2.50 to $2.95 and are made with fruit and a powdered extract with green coffee, vice president of global beverage Julie Felss Masino told Reuters. They also have less caffeine than regular coffee.

Starbucks does not often disclose sales of individual products. It only recently began saying that Frappuccino is a $2 billion-a-year product.

But the coffee company is excited enough about reaching $100 million in sales of its instant coffee Via, which officially launched last September. It had been tested in Seattle and Chicago since February 2009.

It took Frappuccinos about three years to reach that level of sales, CEO Howard Schultz said in a release.

A survey showed that 55 percent of Via customers drink it at home, 25 percent at work, and 20 percent "while on the go."

Via is sold at 12,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. and 37,000 other stores including food, drug and mass merchandise stores like Target. It's also available in Canada, Japan and the U.K.

Starbucks postponed the opening of its first shop in St. Petersburg, Russia, by two years, The Moscow Times reported.

"We are not disclosing information about the reasons for the delay because of investors' plans," Lia Dovgun told the paper. She is marketing manager of Monaks Trading in Moscow, which is Starbucks' partner for Russia. Monaks is owned by Kuwait-based Alshaya Group, which also operates Starbucks in the Middle East.

The coffee chain will not be part of a St. Petersburg mall project "for political reasons,"
Stanislava Bilen, a representative of Jones Lang LaSalle, which represents a mall where Starbucks was set to open, told the Times.

Starbucks is behind other coffeehouses in Russia, having entered the market late because of a long-running dispute with a Moscow attorney.

Moscow now has 148 Shokoladnitsa cafes, about 190 Coffee House outlets and 32 Starbucks, The Moscow Times reported.

The Four Seasons employee who directed Mickey Drexler away from Starbucks this week might have spoken too quickly.

Drexler, the celebrated retail executive known for turning around Ann Taylor and Gap, now heads J. Crew and was in Seattle for the opening of the Northwest's first Madewell store at University Village.

A Four Seasons worker discouraged Drexler from finding a nearby Starbucks, the CEO said in an interview with The Seattle Times' Amy Martinez, whose Madewell story is here.

Drexler did not dig the coffee shop he was sent to instead.

What do you suppose the chances are that he doesn't know Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz? Both are retail dynamos who grew up in modest circumstances in New York City and now vacation in the Hamptons. (Drexler bought the Andy Warhol's former estate in 2007, and Schultz tried to keep Starbucks out of East Hampton for a while.)

After eight days trying to suss out the best coffee in Seattle, the posters at Reddit.com haven't gotten very far.

They've listed Espresso Vivace, Portland-based Stumptown Coffee, Seattle Coffee Works, Caffe Vita and Trabant Coffee & Chai. They've done a bit of Starbucks bashing, including touching on 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea and Clover brewing machines.

But there's not much depth. Lighthouse Roasters, anyone? Herkimer Coffee? Zoka Coffee Roasters? Come on, let's clue them in about Seattle coffee!

Post your ideas on this string at Reddit.com.

(Many thanks to Seattle Times researcher David Turim for pointing it out.)

Update 3:15 p.m.: CoffeeHero.com recently posted a list of the best coffee spots downtown, recommending Seattle Coffee Works, Trabant and Stella Caffe.

Update 7/29/2010: Here's what I got for telling Redditers that there are more than a handful of great coffeehouses in Seattle: "I couldn't decide if I wanted to punch her in her smug little face before or after I read the article."

• Fair Trade has a new certification called Fair for Life that Seattle-based Theo Chocolate recently earned from the Institute for Marketecology. It looks at the entire supply chain, including Theo's Seattle factory, to ensure that all of its farmer relationships and trade practices are equitable and responsible. Theo also likes that it's saving money on certification fees. Rather than pay a Fair Trade group to use its logo, Theo can put more money toward technical assistance for cocoa farmers. Looks like a few coffee companies have joined the program, too.
• This week's story about a hidden camera at a Starbucks shop in San Diego reminded me of all the crazy crimes -- stolen tip jars, cars crashing into storefronts, guns being pulled -- that happen at Starbucks all over the country. I always wonder whether other chains experience these events. A StarbucksGossip.com reader discovered part of the answer by Googling a few lists of car crashes at big chains.
• McDonald's said today that its espresso program is adding $125,000 a year in sales to its typical U.S. store. Still, investors thumped the stock because June same-store sales were lower than Wall Street expected -- sort of like Starbucks' stock when it announced strong earnings on Wednesday but said it might not blow away analysts' profit expectations for next year. Today, Barclays Capital cut its target price for Starbucks to $26 from $28. It's at $25.34 as I write.

Maybe it was the sweltering weather that everyone outside the Northwest experienced. Or maybe it was the new recipe Starbucks introduced. Possibly it was the marketing campaign around how customizable the new drinks are.

Whatever propelled customers toward Starbucks Frappuccinos, the sugary iced drinks helped boost U.S. sales growth to heights not seen in more than four years. They also helped send profits up 37 percent to $207.9 million, or 27 cents a share, for the third fiscal quarter ended June 27.

Still, the stock price fell because profit guidance for Starbucks' next fiscal year was not as high as Wall Street hoped, partly because coffee costs are taking a bite out of earnings.

Because Starbucks has long-term contracts with coffee growers, the chain has been shielded from recent coffee price spikes caused by dwindling inventories of coffee worldwide.

Now the high prices are catching up to it, but analyst Sharon Zackfia at William Blair & Co. said it's a manageable issue.

"I worry much more about things like labor and health care," she said.

Here's the rest of the story running in tomorrow's paper.

The interview offers insight into Schultz's thinking since he reassumed the role of CEO in early 2008. It's polished enough that it could be a broad-brush outline of the book he plans to publish next year.

So what went wrong, back in 2007 when Starbucks' sales suffered before those of other retailers?

"I think there was a herd mentality--a reason for being that somehow became linked to PE, the stock price, and a group of people who felt they were invincible," Schultz said.

A key to Starbucks' rebirth was an October 2008 leadership conference and massive volunteer effort in New Orleans, he said. "If we hadn't had New Orleans, we wouldn't have turned things around. It was real, it was truthful, and it was about leadership."

Here's Starbucks' video about that 10,000-employee bonding event:

Schultz also said institutional investors have pressured Starbucks to cut workers' health care benefits. It's the sort of pressure Issaquah-based Costco Wholesale gets on every quarterly call with analysts. Both companies have resisted, although Starbucks is more vocal about its resistance. Schultz said he told one investor, "I could cut $300 million out of a lot of things, but do you want to kill the company, and kill the trust in what this company stands for? There is no way I will do it, and if that is what you want us to do, you should sell your stock."

Unlike Costco, Starbucks also saved some money, including some health-care costs, by eliminating 34,000 jobs during its last fiscal year.

The interview touches on social media, China and Schultz's need to get succession planning right next time, although he's not leaving soon.

His favorite coffee? Aged Sumatra, no surprise to his followers.

His typical drink? Doppio espresso macchiato, an odd choice because while it's a popular little dose at independent coffeehouses, it isn't even on Starbucks menus. You can order one by name, but ordering a macchiato at Starbucks, you're just as likely to get a caramel drink with coffee.

This week, Starbucks introduced iced instant coffee in Japan and said it will sell Via (non-iced) instant coffee through grocery stores there beginning in the fall.

Starbucks' 875 shops in Japan are selling the iced version, which isn't the same as iced Via in the U.S., according to mega-fan Noboru Sakamoto, who's tried both.

The U.S. version is sweetened, but the Japanese version is not, he said.

"I want Starbucks coffee Japan Ltd to release 'Starbucks VIA(R) Iced Coffee,' Sakamoto wrote in an e-mail that included these photos of the product that just hit shelves in Japan and is called "Via Coffee Essence Iced Coffee."

"Coffee essence" sounds a little like "cheese food," doesn't it?

• Starbucks' profits rose 24 percent to $391 million during its fiscal year ended September, the company reported months ago. But recent filings in the United Kingdom show it's on the opposite trajectory there, losing almost $15 million during the same period, the Guardian of London reports. The U.K. is one of Starbucks' largest overseas markets, with 712 of its 16,635 locations. Only Canada and Japan have more. The Guardian says the U.K. pain might be a result of competition from Costa Coffee, which is doing just fine. This week, Starbucks said it will sell the instant coffee Via at major U.K. grocery stores, and sell Via and a pour-over product called Starbucks Origami Personal Drip at grocery stores in Japan (photo courtesy of Starbucks).
• If you missed the World Barista Championship in real time last month, check out Sprudge.com's compilation of archived videos of individual competitors, including first-ever U.S. winner Michael Phillips of Chicago.
Watch live streaming video from worldbaristachampionship2010 at livestream.com
• StarbucksGossip.com webmaster Jim Romenesko recently visited Toronto, where he saw a few Starbucks (and other) stores with broken windows from the G20 riots. He also said brewed coffee is served there without lids. With a New York mother suing Starbucks for spilling hot tea on her baby because it didn't have an insulating sleeve, what might happen with lid-less coffee?
• A new non-profit is selling Laotian coffee to fund books for Laotian children. Seattle-based LiveGlocal offers the beans for $13 a pound online, where there's also a blog and more information about the organization and its founder, Tyson Adams. He said LiveGlocal also has sold coffee to fundraising groups, who give the proceeds to their own causes.

• Italy-based Lavazza has introduced an edible coffee cup, which is basically an elaborate cookie billed by one designer as "green design." It's not available in the Seattle area, where Lavazza -- better known for its calendars -- still has no shops. But you can read about it and other coffee news in an Italian coffee newsletter called Comunicaffe that's available online and in English. (Photo courtesy of Lavazza, and many thanks to David for the find.)
• Tully's Coffee CEO Carl Pennington has been named its chairman as well, replacing Tully's founder Tom O'Keefe, who retired last month. Tully's board also elected two new directors, Walter Schoenfeld and Scott Anderson, both from investment firms. Schoenfeld also served as vice president of the Seattle Sonics' parent company and general partner in the Seattle Mariners Baseball Club.

Blame it on the heat, the World Cup or the July 4 holiday, but we're having a slow news week.

Today's updates:

A New York woman has sued Starbucks because her baby was injured when she spilled its hot tea on him, UPI reports. Her lawyer says the chain should have served the tea with insulation or on a tray.

And Seattle's Best Coffee -- a brand of Starbucks -- continues its fast-food expansion, with plans to roll into an unspecified number of 300 Burger King locations in Canada this fall.

Seattle's Best partnered with Burger King in February, when it began moving into 7,250 of the burger chain's shops in the U.S. It also sells coffee at 9,000 Subway locations in the U.S. and Canada.

The push is part of Starbucks' broader effort to make money without opening scads of new stores, and to fight a major coffee push by McDonald's that began years ago but only last year went global and added the heft of a pricey advertising campaign. McCafe accounts for about 6 percent of McDonald's $8 billion in U.S. sales.

News of Starbucks' flavored coffees is a couple months old now, but the Crosscut Blog has livened it up with a look at Starbucks as "our mercurial, petulant sexpot."

Has anybody tried the vanilla, caramel and cinnamon flavors that hit grocery shelves last month? How are they?

While the Dutch paint Cape Town orange, the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian raises questions about why Starbucks chose Emperica Marketing as the business partner for its first retail venture at several hotels in that country.

"David Taylor, director of Emperica Marketing, which secured the Starbucks contract for the South African market, is at the centre of a controversy surrounding the liquidation of Tiffindell ski resort. The future of the resort is still in jeopardy after an investment by Taylor went belly up and investors in the resort are hopping mad, threatening to sue Taylor and his business partner, Andre le Roux, for their losses," Yolandi Groenewald writes.

She quotes Taylor as having said (possibly in another article), "With regard to my personal involvement in the matter, you should note that I was never a director of Tiffindell Limited and that I was not personally the subject of any litigation," he said. "I was a director of the property holding company, Tiffski (Pty) Ltd until January 2010."

Starbucks is finding new ways to use the 3 billion paper cups its customers use each year, even in cities where recycling is not popular or mandated.

This fall, it will send cups used at its Chicago stores to Green Bay, where a Georgia Pacific paper mill will turn them into Starbucks napkins.

The effort is a major push by Starbucks to create a commercial market for its used cups, which include 1 billion plastic cups for cold drinks.

Over the past few weeks, it has put recycle and compost bins into 90 Seattle stores to comply with a new city ordinance.

By Thursday, every grocery store, restaurant and coffee shop in Seattle will be required to recycle and compost, and to provide recyclable or compostable to-go packaging for everything from ground beef to lattes.

The new ordinance will prevent 6,000 tons of food and service ware from piling onto garbage heaps. Starbucks' cups also are recycled or composted in San Francisco and Ontario, because of laws there.

In areas without such mandates, commercial demand determines which products are recycled.

"The biggest road block to recycling is the lack of demand" for old paper, said Jim Hanna, Starbucks' director of environmental impact (pictured). "We need to create demand for recyclers for our products."

The effort is similar to something Coca-Cola has done in South Carolina, where it invested $60 million in a plant that makes soda pop bottles from old soda bottles and other recycled plastic.

Environmental activists at the As You Sow Foundation in San Francisco, which led a shareholder initiative earlier this year to push Starbucks to recycle more, is impressed with its latest efforts. The initiative received 11 percent of the vote, a healthy chunk considering that mutual funds and other institutions own three-quarters of Starbucks' stock.

Remember last summer, when East Coast news crews rushed here to cover the first Starbucks that isn't a Starbucks? Called 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, it has a rustic look, a creative local menu including wine and beer, and regular evening entertainment. A few months later came Roy Street Coffee & Tea, also on Capitol Hill.

Starbucks will keep those stores, which it calls "learning labs," but has shelved plans to open a third.

Instead, it is remodeling its popular East Olive Way store on Capitol Hill, which will feature an outdoor deck and a 360-degree barista bar in the middle. It will be the first Starbucks-branded cafe to sell wine and beer, and there will be live entertainment.

Here's the story I wrote for today's paper. One thing I didn't mention: The garden outside the remodeled store will feature interesting native plants that fit with a P-Patch the city is planning for the parking lot just north of Starbucks.

Olive Way has long been a test store; now it will test some of Starbucks' most cutting-edge ideas, under the Starbucks name.

As if learning to order espresso weren't hard enough -- with grandes here, macchiatos there, and ristretto shots that trip people up -- there can also be mine fields of barista attitude.

Anyone who's had a great shot of espresso knows that baristas are not the same as other front-counter workers. Although some are cocky and secretive about their skills, many want to share what they know about coffee.

Then you come across characters like "Egon," a pseudonym for a Starbucks barista whose disdain for customers is so consuming that he has committed his gripes to the web. Given how much he dislikes discussing coffee, coffee drinks, his company or his customers, perhaps Egon should be flipping burgers, or polishing rocks in a back room where no one will bother him.

Other Starbucks baristas are upsetting Foursquare users who say that baristas have beaten them to online deals. (What is Foursquare? I'll let The Onion take that one.)

Where have you found great baristas willing to chat about coffee and anything else?

Starbucks shareholders know her as the woman who does official business at annual meetings, like introducing the board of directors and announcing vote tallies.

But Starbucks headquarters workers have seen her other side at company events, where she belts out tunes she's written to an admiring crowd.

This weekend, Starbucks general counsel Paula Boggs takes her vocal talent wide, with a performance at the EMP/SFM Sky Church from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tickets are $10 and benefit KEXP, where she is an advisory council member. Her debut CD, "A Buddha State of Mind," will also be on sale.

Schultz is the highest paid even using the conservative $12.4 million value that Starbucks accountants put on his stock options package, according to a story by Seattle Times reporter Eric Pryne.

Those options are worth well over $40 million now and climbing along with its stock price.

Other Starbucks news I missed while I was away:

• Starbucks settled out of court with a woman who said her Starbucks manager had an illegal sexual relationship with her when she was 16, 20/20 reported. Terms of the settlement were not released.


• Starbucks also will pay $80,000 to settle an Equal Opportunity Employment Commission lawsuit that alleges an Arkansas man as a barista because he is disabled by multiple sclerosis, the Times Record Online reported. The chain also agreed to train managers on disability discrimination, submit reports to the EEOC about that training and about discrimination complaints, post a notice reinforcing its policies regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act, and notify Arkansas Rehabilitation Services of job openings at the location in question as part of a good-faith effort to hire disabled employees.


• In its latest effort to reduce the waste from the 4 billion cups its customers use each year, Starbucks held a contest looking for ideas and awarded $10,000 to a group from Boston led by Mira Holley, which proposed giving free coffee or another menu item to every 10th person waiting in line with a mug or other reusable cup, The New York Times reports. There's no guarantee that or any of the 430 ideas submitted in the contest will be put in practice.


• Starbucks opens its first story in Hungary.

For those keeping track, the new high makes CEO Howard Schultz's option awards from late 2008 worth $52 million. (Here's the math: If he exercised all 2.7 million options at their low, low exercise price of $8.64, then sold at $27.99, the before-tax gain would be $52 million.)

Speaking of which, keep an eye out for Seattle Times reporter Eric Pryne's CEO pay stories on Sunday.

I'll be back on Monday.....

Starbucks Melody (Overton) unreservedly recommends the latest book on the world's largest coffee-shop chain. Called Galaxy Coffee, its author is a former Starbucks marketer who now writes BrandAutopsy.com.

It's the latest in a very long line, which one of Melody's commenters lists as:

The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph A. Michelli

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill

Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture by John Moore

Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks by Bryant Simon

It's Not About the Coffee: Lessons on Putting People First from a Life at Starbucks by Howard Behar, Janet Goldstein

Starbucks Nation: A Novel by Chris Ver Wiel

Starbucks Passion for Coffee by Dave Olsen

My Sister's a Barista: How They Made Starbucks a Home Away from Home (Great Brand Stories series) by John Simmons

A few not on her list:

Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks Stock by Karen Blumenthal

Wrestling with Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino by Kim Fellner

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture by Taylor Clark

Gus Van Zant is making "How Starbucks Saved My Life" into a movie starring Tom Hanks (who opined on Starbucks in a "You've Got Mail" clip that YouTube won't let me embed). And CEO Howard Schultz plans to publish a second book in March.

With all the free publicity, it's curious that Starbucks has had to start advertising and will increase its marketing spending by $30 million through September.

Here are a few non-Starbucks books about coffee, many recommended by local baristas:

Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast (second edition due this fall)

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee by Micheale Weissman

The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen

The Perfect Cup: A Coffee Lover's Guide To Buying, Brewing, And Tasting by Timothy James Castle

All About Coffee by William H. Ukers

Former barista champion James Hoffmann recently wrote on his blog that Everything But Espresso: Professional Coffee Brewing Techniques by Scott Rao is "essential." (Thanks to Jesse Kahn for pointing out more recommendations from Hoffmann.)

Tall Skinny Bitter: Notes from the Center of Coffee Culture by Dani Cone and Chris Munson

And I can't resist: Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Candacy A. Taylor, which profiles diner waitresses. Hey, they sling coffee, too.

Thoughts on those? Recommendations for more?

Starbucks will offer free Wi-Fi beginning July 1 at about 60 percent of its U.S. stores. It will not be available at some 4,400 shops in airports, grocery stores and other combination locations.

The move comes six months after McDonald's began offering free Wi-Fi.

Currently, Starbucks offers two hours a day of free Internet access for customers who use a registered Starbucks card at least once a month. AT&T DSL customers get free Wi-Fi, and there are other plans for AT&T customers; everyone else pays $3.99 for two hours.

Howard Schultz also said at a Wired business conference that this fall, the chain will unveil Starbucks Digital Network in partnership with Yahoo. The network will give customers free access to The Wall Street Journal online and other services; its partners include iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA Today and Zagat. The network sprang from a new Starbucks business unit called digital ventures, which is led by Chief Information Officer Stephen Gillett.

A few coffee thoughts before I go:

• As I write, it's National Doughnut Day, and shares of Krispy Kreme are up 7 percent, because its quarterly profit more than doubled. Another doughnut chain, which prefers you call it a coffee chain despite the name Dunkin' Donuts, is discussed mostly by men on Twitter and other social media. Starbucks is mentioned slightly more by women and, surprise, people in Washington. Coffee overall is about even between the sexes, all according to Lexicalist. And, Starbucks still hasn't said why it stopped labeling its doughnuts as made by Top Pot.


• In other Starbucks news, a Virginia man says his addiction to the company's coffee contributed to his killing his wife, NBC reports. And the chain settled for an undisclosed amount with a former barista in California who said Starbucks did not protect her from the sex demands of her manager when she was 16, ABC reports. In Seattle, Starbucks continues to give away tickets to various events on Fridays at 2 p.m., no purchase necessary. They run out fast. On June 11, it will be a free child's ticket to the Seattle Aquarium, worth $11 if your kid is over 3.


• Trabant Coffee & Chai will soon carry one of the hottest tickets in coffee, a Nekisse micro-lot selection from Ethiopia, which recently sold for $12 a cup in New York and has appeared for considerably less -- $2.69 a cup -- at Seattle's Fonte Coffee Roaster. Trabant's roaster, 49th Parallel Coffee in Vancouver, is giving all the proceeds from its Nekisse sales to a non-profit called imagine1day to build classrooms in Ethiopia, said 49th Parallel owner Vince Piccolo. Trabant is 49th Parallel's only wholesale customer in Seattle, possibly because the roaster does not have wholesale salespeople. Piccolo said he prefers to focus on sourcing and roasting coffee for the five-year-old company, which nevertheless has hundreds of wholesale customers across North America. The beans cost $30 for 12 ounces online, and Trabant barista Alex Negranza (he of the amazing cocktail) plans to write about it online soon.


• Finally, CoffeeTalk's June issue came out this week, featuring tea. The magazine's Daily Dose e-mail also linked to good news about Brazil's coffee crop.

Software company Nuance Communications will lease about a sixth of the space at the 505 1st Ave. S. building that Starbucks bought in 2006, The Seattle Times' Eric Pryne reports.

The fate of the building in the Pioneer Square Historic District has been debated since Starbucks decided two years ago that it wouldn't need the space for its workers.

Meanwhile on the other coast, Starbucks is serving coffee on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, part of its effort to attract more traders.

Starbucks buys more coffee than it sells in Africa, where it opened its first shop, in Egypt, in 2006.

But on Monday, a business partner announced that Starbucks coffee will be served at some hotels and casinos in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban in time for the upcoming World Cup.

All the espresso it serves in South Africa will be Fair Trade certified.

Updated 6/2/2010: Thanks to my colleague April Simpson for this insight regarding coffee in South Africa: Capetown has a chain called Seattle Coffee that appears to be copying Seattle's Best Coffee, and "I believe the largest chain in South Africa is Vida e Caffe, which has cafes across the country and in London. It's a fun, bright shop with white tables and chairs, and typically an outdoor patio. I remember stores always playing lively Portuguese music that spilled outside."

The going up part fits Starbucks' stock, which is higher than it's been in more than two years. At about $26, the options CEO Howard Schultz was awarded in late 2008 are now worth $47 million. (Here's the math: If he exercised all 2.7 million options at their low, low exercise price of $8.64, then sold at $26, the before-tax gain would be $47 million.)

Short sellers aren't the only ones who think Starbucks shares are overvalued. Morningstar, a research firm that isn't in the investment banking business (!), thinks its fair value is $24.

Investment bank Credit Suisse disagrees, and started covering the stock today with its best "outperform" rating and a $34 price target, Barron's reports. Analyst Keith Siegner likes Starbucks' new strategy, which includes driving more traffic to each store rather than opening a lot more stores. He also sees international stores reaching an "inflection point" after which, he says, they could crank out 20 percent profit growth each year.

Perhaps menu changes in France will play a part?

Listen to what Starbucks is telling analysts on June 2, when it will webcast a presentation at the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC Strategic Decisions Conference 2010 in New York.

• The comic strip Betty took a few swipes at Fair Trade coffee this week, saying it doesn't taste good even if it's doing good. Of course, there are questions about whether Fair Trade is as good as its marketing.
• Caffe Vita coffee is fueling three guys who left Seattle this week on a mission to document the American urban farm movement. Called Breaking Through Concrete, the project will take a photographer, writer and videographer through 15 cities before ending in Grayslake, Ill., on July 4. The material will go into a book to be published next year. You can follow the trip on Caffe Vita's blog and at BreakingThroughConcrete.com.
• Coffee Strong, a coffeehouse just outside Fort Lewis that is run by the non-profit G.I. Voice, is trying to raise $6,000 to advertise its services to the roughly 10,000 soldiers who will return there from Iraq and Afghanistan over the next three months. The coffeehouse is staffed with G.I. rights counselors and makes referrals to mental health counseling services and veterans benefits advocates. "We need your contribution to ensure that any soldier who needs help will get it, and many are denied services due them. Together we can save lives and make sure that no one falls through the cracks because nobody is there to listen," G.I. Voice and Coffee Strong Executive Director Seth Manzel said in an e-mail to potential supporters. Donations are being taken on its web site.
• The G.I. coffeehouse also has a Facebook page with nearly 1,000 people who like it, far less than Seattle's biggest coffee company. In the Facebook switch from fans to "likers," Starbucks' following dropped dramatically from last summer to 1.9 million, once again putting it behind Coca-Cola.
• Sprudge.com is stoked about the Nekisse beans that recently arrived at Seattle's Fonte Coffee Roaster from southern Ethiopia. Rather than charge $12 a cup like one New York cafe, Fonte will sell the coffee at its usual prices -- $2.69 for a 16-ounce cup of drip coffee or $2.85 for a personal French press. The beans can be bought at the downtown cafe (and by June 1 online) for $24.50 a pound or $12.50 a half pound. Fonte's roaster, Steve Smith, estimates the supply will last through August, depending on demand.
• Duane Kapovich, who works at Starbucks' 7th and Pike store in downtown Seattle, will throw out the first pitch at the Mariners game tonight, launching a five-week promotion in which the company is giving away free tickets to summer events after 2 p.m. on Fridays. It's one ticket per person while supplies last, which was 5 or 10 minutes this afternoon, when shops gave away Mariners tickets. Give-aways on future Fridays are for (May 28) free tickets to the Seattle International Film Festival, (June 4) free tickets to the Seattle Art Museum, (June 11) free child's ticket to the Seattle Aquarium and (June 18) free tickets to "Burn The Floor" at The Paramount Theatre. Kapovich and his son, Barrett, are serious fans, having attended the groundbreaking for Safeco Field and the July 1999 opening game, when the Mariners played the Padres as they are tonight. Maybe it has something to do with Barrett's birthday: April 3, 1989, the day Ken Griffey Jr. debuted in the Major League.
• Starbucks' lobbying efforts pale next to the banking industry's, but its spending more than doubled to $180,000 in the first quarter from $80,000 a year ago. It's on track to spend roughly the same on lobbying as it did last year.

Seattle Times editor Rami Grunbaum wrote in his Sunday Buzz column about the static Starbucks is getting for its new Seattle's Best Coffee logo.

Spokeswoman Jenny McCabe told him the logo did well in testing and is meant to be somewhat generic. "We want it to be a universal sign for good coffee someday," she said.

There's an interesting conversation at StarbucksMelody.com about Starbucks' new announcement that it will sell vanilla, caramel and cinnamon flavored coffees in grocery stores.

Flavored coffee is a no-no to coffee purists, but then so are Starbucks' popular Frappuccinos.

Starbucks is once again looking to grow, but this time will be different.

The coffee juggernaut is not aiming for seven new stores a day, a clip it reached three years ago after setting a goal of 30,000 stores worldwide. That dream died a year later and just over halfway there with sales and profits sliding before other retailers really felt the recession. The Seattle company has since closed nearly 900 stores and eliminated more than 34,000 jobs.

The new, slimmed-down Starbucks wants to expand in areas that historically took a back seat to its explosive U.S. growth and that can be tapped with less upfront investment. The new focus is on:

• Expanding the number of foreign stores, which Starbucks often opens with business partners who share the cost and risk.


• Introducing new Starbucks products like Via instant coffee in grocery and convenience stores all over the world.


• Reinvigorating Seattle's Best Coffee, a secondary brand that for years was an afterthought.

If readers of The Seattle Times are any gauge, the new Seattle's Best Coffee logo is not a hit. An online poll shows 68 percent of them think Starbucks, which owns SBC, should go back to the drawing board, and the comments -- like so many newspaper reader comments -- are not kind.

It could be that new logos in general attract heat. The site Brand New was formed after readers of another, now-defunct site were turned off by gripes about new logos. Now that flak appears on Brand New, where a lot of professionals rip on and spoof new logos. "And, while we do all bitch quite a bit, the opinions presented throughout amount to something of real value for those in the field," the site says.

Here's their take on the new Seattle's Best Coffee logo, including a few snarky logos they created to spoof it. Thank you to Unkanny, a commenter in a previous string, for the link.

After years as Starbucks' little-mentioned shadow brand, Seattle's Best Coffee is stepping into the light with redesigned cups and signage, and a Facebook page to underscore its rapidly expanding presence in fast-food restaurants.

One of Seattle's oldest coffee brands, Seattle's Best -- known for a smoother, lighter roast than Starbucks -- has seen change before.

When Jim and Dave Stewart started the shop on Whidbey Island in 1969, it was called the Wet Whisker and sold only ice cream. They quickly added coffee and moved to the Seattle waterfront, where it became Stewart Brothers Coffee.

After a couple of name and ownership changes, Starbucks bought the aspirationally named Seattle's Best Coffee chain of 129 stores in 2003 and mostly ignored it.

It was so independent of Starbucks that Seattle's Best employees bragged about not sharing their recipes with Starbucks workers, especially for popular drinks like Red Cane Kola, a cold drink of sugar and cola nuts with creamy froth on top.

Early last year, Seattle's Best had 550 stores, about 480 of them in Borders bookstores.

Then the changes began.

To squeeze higher sales from areas that once took a back seat to its breakneck U.S. store growth, Starbucks started juicing Seattle's Best.

Read the rest of the story about SBC's expansion and new logo. Cup photos courtesy of Starbucks.

Like many bitten by the coffee bug, the Stewart brothers are still in the business. Jim and his wife own coffee plantations in Costa Rica, and he sells his coffee through the Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie. Dave roasts at Vista Clara Coffee in Snohomish.

Update 5/12/10: Here's the Wall Street Journal's take on Seattle's Best, which says, "Perhaps the most radical feature of the Starbucks strategy calls for selling Seattle's Best from vending machines." Seattle's Best machines have been made for years by Concordia Coffee Systems in Bellevue.

Frappuccino fans who can't tolerate lactose are in luck. Frappuccino Light fans who can't tolerate gluten will have to find another drink.

Starbucks' new Frappuccinos no longer have milk in their base mixes, which means that if you order one with soy instead of cow's milk, it's practically a dairy-free beverage. It's not officially designated vegan, because Starbucks says there is the potential for cross-contamination in stores and in manufacturing facilities.

The new base mix for light Frappuccinos now includes gluten, a depressing fact for fans with celiac disease and other forms of gluten intolerance. The regular Frappuccino base mix does not have gluten as an ingredient, but is not officially designated gluten-free because of the risk of cross-contamination. Customers who want a reduced calorie Frappuccino but are sensitive to gluten can request non-fat milk in a regular Frappuccino, the company said.

Meg Perrine, a former Frappuccino Light fan in Kirkland, has visited 12 Starbucks in Arizona and Washington since the new recipe started rolling out, and no barista or manager she talked to knew that gluten had been added to the light base mix. One barista looked at the label and told her it was gluten free, although gluten was on the ingredient list. She has a friend who has blogged about it and gives readers a link to a comment page.

"They knew when they put this in that it's going make thousands of people sick," Perrine said.

She doesn't worry about cross-contamination in stores because, "I ask for a clean pitcher, and they do it for me every time. The baristas are sweet. They know I have celiac disease."

She doesn't worry about cross-contamination at the manufacturers' level because of rules about cleaning the machines and lines between products.

In case you missed the advertising blitz, Starbucks is offering half off its new Frappuccinos from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today through May 16. If you're lucky, maybe a barista will make you an off-the-menu key lime pie version.

Other recent coffee news:

• Coffee from PCC Natural Markets has long been certified organic, Fair Trade and shade grown. Now that Equal Exchange has begun roasting in Oregon, it's all locally roasted as well. Other PCC coffee is roasted by Tony's Coffee in Bellingham, Kalani Organica and Caffe Ladro in Seattle and Fidalgo Bay Coffee in Burlington. (And in other PCC news, the chain has an interesting dilemma with new Seattle laws on recycling and composting.)


• After losing in round one, Carly Simon has filed an amended lawsuit against Starbucks regarding its alleged lack of marketing for her 2008 album, "This Kind of Love."


• A New York City customer is suing Starbucks after allegedly getting second-degree burns from "unreasonably hot" tea. Starbucks said it takes seriously its obligation to provide safe products, brews its drinks to industry standards and is investigating the complaint in New York.


• Former Starbucks executive Timothy Casey became CEO of Mrs. Fields' Original Cookies, which franchises TCBY and Mrs. Fields' Cookies stores. Once a regional vice president at Starbucks, Casey also worked at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Bakers Square Restaurants, QSR Magazine reports.


• Peet's Coffee & Tea posted a first-quarter profit of $3.1 million, even with last year but higher than analysts expected. Caribou Coffee's profit more than doubled to $1 million.


• A couple readers asked why I wrote about a Whidbey Island coffee shop that's for sale. I thought it was rare enough to be news. I was so wrong. Craigslist is crammed with ads for cafes and espresso stands.


• Finally, my former colleague and rapt coffee news reader David Carlos found this video of Kristin Chenoweth singing a little ditty called, "Taylor the Latte Boy." He called it cute; it kind of scares me.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and activist photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik will participate in a panel discussion this evening at Seattle University on the lasting effects of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The talk is from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Pigott Auditorium. Details here.

Torgovnik's book, Unintended Consequences, chronicles the lives of women who bore children and contracted HIV after being raped amid the widespread violence. The fallout continues, with some being rejected by their own families.

Women have played a big role in reviving coffee plantations in Rwanda, where Starbucks opened a farmer support center last year. Like the company's long-standing support center in Costa Rica, it helps farmers grow better coffee that can be sold at higher prices. Schultz also visited Rwanda last year and met women coffee farmers who weave baskets in the off season; some baskets were subsequently sold in Starbucks stores.

Tonight's discussion will be hosted by David Powers, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle University. It's open to the public, and e-mail reservations are recommended.

Photo of Maraba Coffee Co-op in Rwanda used with permission of Colleen Taugher via FlickR:

I started this poll a couple weeks ago, when a lot of regular Frappuccino drinkers had tried the new recipe. Today is the official launch, complete with TV and web promotions.

Read my longer story about why Starbucks is messing with a $2 billion product. The new Frappuccinos give customers a choice of milk, including soy, and more official ways to order decaf, extra syrup and extra coffee -- things that the company's "just say yes" baristas did unofficially before.

The photo by Seattle Times photographer Ken Lambert is of director of blended beverages and real-life bicycle commuter Ian Cranna mixing a Frappuccino while Gita Stiritz holds the lid at a headquarters employee event on Monday afternoon. Coffee lounges at Starbucks headquarters will now have Frappuccino ingredients and mixers. Maybe the stationary bikes will stick around to help fans of double chocolately chip Frappuccinos burn off the 670 calories in a 24-ounce drink?

In its quest to eventually sell more than $1 billion in instant coffee, Starbucks has blanketed the U.K. and Japan with 0.12-ounce packets of Via Ready Brew, and now they are rolling into grocery stores.

Starbucks said last fall that it would launch Via in grocery stores this year, and reminded investors about the roll-out in subsequent conference calls. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reiterated the plan, and today a press release says Via is in 25,000 grocery, mass and drugstores including Kroger, Wal-Mart and Safeway. It was already in Target, Costco, REI and on United Airlines.

Starbucks also said it will introduce an iced coffee version of Via, which is lightly sweetened, in late June. One 0.925-ounce packet will make a 16-ounce drink, which fits nicely in a water bottle if you're on the run. Five packets will cost $5.95, a better deal than regular Via, which costs about the same per packet but makes just 8 ounces of coffee at a time.

Portland-based Stumptown Coffee Roasters will open its summertime digs in Amsterdam this weekend, and Andrew Daday, who runs its Seattle operations, sent this photo. Sure wish I could visit.

Meanwhile back home, on Saturday at 7 p.m., Starbucks-owned Roy Street Coffee & Tea will screen "Red Gold," a documentary about the battle over Pebble Mine, a proposed copper and gold mining operation at Bristol Bay in Alaska, which has the world's largest sockeye run.

Jeb Wyman, a Bristol Bay fisherman (and former adviser to The Collegian, a Seattle Central Community College student newspaper that was shut down in 2008), bought a copy of the film, which was funded by Trout Unlimited and came out in 2008.

Along with the film, he's bringing free samples of Jeb's Wild Salmon smoked sockeye and king salmon. Starbucks' Major Cohen plans to start carrying Wyman's fish on the salmon plate at Roy Street and 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea. "We've been trying to do local, so it's a great way to do local," said Cohen, project manager for the two stores.

The film's name makes an interesting comparison to "Black Gold," a 2006 documentary about the poverty of coffee farmers in Ethiopia. "Reds" is another name for sockeye salmon. The mine in Alaska is still under consideration.

Roy Street's at 700 Broadway East on Capitol Hill:

View Roy Street Coffee & Tea in a larger map

His first book, "Pour Your Heart Into It" in 1997, was a hit and remains a must-read for Starbucks baristas and other employees. According to co-writer Dori Jones Yang, it made several best-seller lists and has been translated into eight languages.

The new book, scheduled for publication in March 2011, will focus on Starbucks' recent turnaround, although Schultz tends to avoid that word. It will be written in collaboration with Joanne Gordon, a former Forbes writer whose other books include "Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life."

"In the years since I published my first book, Pour Your Heart into It, the world has changed in ways I couldn't have imagined, testing Starbucks as a company and challenging my own understanding of the responsibilities required of a leader," Schultz said in a press release by Rodale Books, which will publish the new book. "My motivation is to chronicle Starbucks transformation and how we confronted these challenges by reaffirming our core values and reinventing our company from the bottom up. I hope the book will prove an insightful tool for anyone facing fundamental business and societal shifts, but I am also writing this for Starbucks partners (employees), to honor the work they do every day and the human connection they've formed with our many customers around the world."

Schultz's proceeds from the book will go to the Starbucks Foundation and the CUP Fund, which is funded by Starbucks workers to help their colleagues in financial need.

Starbucks is among 16 companies that pledged Monday to cut salt in their products as part of a national effort begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Reuters reports.

Starbucks will cut salt in its breakfast sandwiches, like the bacon, gouda and egg frittata that currently has 1,050 mg. of sodium.

Other companies participating in Bloomberg's National Salt Reduction Initiative, which aims to reduce salt in restaurant and packaged foods by 25 percent over five years, are Au Bon Pain, Boar's Head, FreshDirect, Goya, Hain Celestial Group, Heinz, Kraft, LiDestri, Mars Food US, McCain Foods, Red Gold,Inc., Subway, Unilever, Uno Chicago Grill and White Rose.

U.S. researchers found recently that cutting salt intake by nearly 10 percent could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and strokes over several decades and save the United States $32 billion in health-care costs, Reuters reported.

Starbucks' new Frappuccino recipe appeared at more stores in Seattle this week, as StarbucksMelody.com reported.

Although creative baristas have always customized the popular Frappuccino, for example using decaf instead of caffeinated coffee and adding syrups for customers who asked, the new formula allows for even more flexibility. The most noticeable change is using fresh milk instead of a milk-based mix, and allowing customers to choose which milk they want, including dairy-free.

The revamped Frappuccinos won't be in all U.S. stores until May, but baristas and customers have been discussing them for weeks at StarbucksGossip.com, and enough people have tried them that it seems like time for a poll on Starbucks' $1 billion-a-year beverage:

Starbucks is celebrating Earth Day with a "cup summit" in Boston, where it's meeting with cup manufacturers, recyclers, NGOs and others to talk about making the 3 billion paper cups it uses each year easier to recycle. Starbucks held its first cup summit in Seattle last spring.

Starbucks is falling short on recycling goals, it said in a global responsibility report released earlier this week.

Eleven percent of the company's shareholders recently voted in favor of a proposal that would have pushed Starbucks to recycle more. That's a big share of the vote, considering that three-quarters of Starbucks shares are owned by mutual funds and other institutional investors who follow corporate voting guidance, which dictates against shareholder proposals.

As You Sow, the San Francisco non-profit that spearheaded the shareholder proposal, asked that one of its East Coast partners be allowed to participate in the cup summit, but was told that the summit is not about the bottles that Starbucks perceives are As You Sow's main interest. As You Sow's proposal actually included recycling for cups as well.

Jim Hanna, Starbucks director of environmental impact, will answer online questions from the public at 1 p.m. Pacific Time today at starbucks.com/cupsummit2010.

Second-quarter profit rose eight-fold to $217.3 million, or 28 cents a share, from $25 million a year earlier. Sales were up 8.6 percent to $2.5 billion, and same-store sales grew 7 percent.

It's the best same-store sales figure since the second quarter 2006, when that measure rose 10 percent. Same-store sales is a key performance measure for stores open at least a year, letting companies and investors know whether sales growth is sustainable or based on new stores.

In a conference call with analysts, CEO Howard Schultz reiterated news he made on a trip to Asia last week, that Starbucks expects China to become its biggest market, and that the company is interested in opening shops in India and Vietnam.

He also said he'd seen McDonald's strong profits today and heard what the burger chain said about coffee sales improving. "If they're getting incrementality on coffee, they're not getting it from us," Schultz said.

Here's the full story, including thoughts on customer satisfaction and Keurig single-serve coffee.

Carly Simon sued Starbucks last year, saying it didn't do enough to promote her 2008 album, "This Kind of Love," which came out shortly after Starbucks decided to back away from the music business. Sonic Youth also complained about Starbucks' lack of marketing.

Los Angeles District Court Judge George Wu dismissed Simon's claims on summary judgment, ruling that Starbucks didn't violate any duties to the singer, according to Hollywood Reporter.

Wu wrote that the written agreement between Starbucks' Hear Music distributor and Simon made no representations regarding Starbucks' participation in the marketing or distribution of her album, the Hollywood Reporter said.

Photo used with permission from Alan Light, via Flickr.

After years of reporting the average price it pays for coffee, Starbucks decided not to report that figure in its 2009 global responsibility report released today. In 2008, it paid an average of $1.49 a pound, up from $1.43 in 2007, $1.42 in 2006, $1.28 in 2005, and $1.20 in 2004, 2003 and 2002. Spokeswoman Deb Trevino said the company is focused instead on 13 goals in the report.

Here are interesting figures it did release about its business in 2009:

Coffee bought: 367 million pounds, down 5 percent from 2008.

Coffee purchased with certifications:
81 percent Certified by Starbucks' C.A.F.E. Practices
11 percent Fair Trade
4 percent Organic

Average electricity use: 6.69 KWH (per square foot each month), down 1. 7 percent

Average water use: 23.4 gallons (per square foot each month), down 4.1 percent

Starbucks met many of its global responsibility goals, but fell short with recycling. Only 399 of its 7,529 company-operated stores in the U.S. and Canada offer recycling for customers. Only 1.5 percent of its drinks were served in reusable mugs or tumblers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. And it faces challenges in the various communities it serves, which do not all offer recycling.

Last month, 11 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of a proposal that would have pushed the company to do more with recycling. That's a large vote, considering that three-quarters of Starbucks' shareholders are mutual funds and other institutional investors that almost always vote the way the company recommends -- in this case, "no."

Later this week Next month, Starbucks will hold its second "cup summit," in which governments, business partners, non-profits and other experts get together to figure out how to make recycling more available.

Starbucks fan Noboru Sakamoto, who has been known to vacation in Seattle because of Starbucks, sent pictures of the launch last week of its instant coffee in Japan, where the product is called Via Coffee Essence.

The roll-out includes the sale of Via mugs, tumblers and teddy bears, or "bearistas."

Simultaneously, Japan's All Nippon Airways began serving Via on flights, like United Airlines did when the instant coffee rolled out in the U.S. last fall. U.K.-based easyJet also serves Via.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz expects Via sales to top $1 billion, he told Bloomberg during the Via launch in Japan.

Bloomberg reported that instant coffee in Japan represents about $2.3 billion of the $19.6 billion global market, based on research by Euromonitor International. The U.S. instant market is a third of Japan's.

Thank you, Noboru Sakamoto, for the photos!

Starbucks, Virgin America and Best Buy are among the first to buy ads on Twitter, The New York Times reports. Twitter is calling the ads Promoted Tweets.

"When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier," the New York Times story says. "The ads will also be a way for companies to enter the conversation when it turns negative."

After years of running little advertising, Starbucks has recently begun buying billboards, full-page ads in newspapers and magazines -- and is putting more resources into Facebook, Twitter and other online marketing efforts.

Starbucks began selling its instant coffee today at 870 coffee shops in Japan, where the product is called Via Coffee Essence. It's already available in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

Starbucks estimates that the at-home coffee market in Japan is $5 billion of a $23 billion global instant coffee business. CEO Howard Schultz told the Wall Street Journal he expects China to surpass Japan in its number of Starbucks stores, something he's been saying for years. He also mentioned wanting to open stores in India and Vietnam. It backed away from plans to open in India three years ago, after having trouble with business applications there.

The company also launched bottled coffee under its Seattle's Best Coffee brand today. The drinks come in three flavors -- iced latte, iced vanilla latte and iced mocha -- and will be sold for $1.49 each or $4.99 for a four-pack at more than 10,000 grocery, convenience and other stores in the western U.S. That product is part of a partnership with Pepsi-Cola North America Beverages.

Starbucks will give customers who bring a reusable tumbler to participating stores a free brewed coffee on Thursday, part of its effort to recruit customers to help reduce their shared environmental impact. For years, the company has offered a 10-cent discount on drinks for customers who bring their own mugs and tumblers.

Its goal is for all its cups to be reusable or recyclable by 2015. Those are tricky terms, because Starbucks' paper and plastic cups are recycled and composted in some parts of the country, but the company will not call them "recyclable" unless they can be recycled in most of the cities where it does business. It's working on that with governments, business partners, non-profits and other experts, who will take part in its second "Cup Summit" in Boston on April 22 and 23. (The first cup summit was in Seattle last May.)

Reusable cups -- porcelain cups provided by Starbucks and mugs and tumblers that customers bring themselves -- are part of the equation. The company said more than 26 million drinks were served in reusable cups in its company-owned stores in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. last year, saving about 1.2 million pounds of paper from going to landfills.

Still, Starbucks goes through 3 billion paper cups and 1 billion plastic cups a year. That quantity, along with Starbucks' bottled and canned drinks, motivated a shareholder proposal for more recycling that won 11 percent of the vote last month.

"While our cup has become an integral part of the coffeehouse experience over the years, it has also become an environmental concern," Ben Packard, Starbucks' vice president of global responsibility, said in a release.

Starbucks encourages customers to think about reusable cups the way they do reusable grocery bags, he said. The company's web site includes an "impact calculator" by the Environmental Defense Fund that figures out how many trees you can save by switching from paper cups to your own tumbler. Someone who drinks two cups a day would save 228 acres of trees. The site invites customers to pledge to use tumblers every day and encourage others to do the same through social tools like Facebook (where Starbucks now has nearly 6.6 million fans).

Starbucks Doubleshot, we know. That's the coffee in a can that's sold everywhere from Safeway to 7-11.

Discoveries, we don't, but here's a picture from Starbucks. They're pre-made coffee drinks like Doubleshot or bottled Frappuccino, but they come in sealed cups and often have interesting names like Seattle and Paris and Qandi. Starbucks first sold Discoveries at convenience stores in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

Over the next few weeks, Starbucks and business partner Arla Foods will introduce Doubleshot and Discoveries in the U.K. The Discoveries will come in three flavors: Seattle Latte, Aztlan Mocha Latte and Qandi Latte (caramel). The drinks will be made by an Arla subsidiary in Denmark.

Bottled, canned and sealed-cup drinks -- along with coffee beans in grocery stores and coffee-flavored ice cream -- are part of Starbucks' global consumer products group. It's the company's smallest segment (the other two are U.S. stores and international stores). Last year, it represented just 8 percent of total net revenues, but it was also the only segment to post an increase in net revenues.

Here's what Doubleshot looks like in the U.K.:

Starbucks recently removed the labels from pastry cases that identified its doughnuts as branded by Seattle-based Top Pot Doughnuts. A Starbucks spokeswoman said the doughnuts are still Top Pot, and the label decision was made in the normal course of business. She declined to elaborate.

The doughnuts are not made in Top Pot's Seattle kitchen. The company gives its recipes to big bakeries all over the country that supply Starbucks stores.

Top Pot reps have not returned calls asking about the label removal. Maybe they're busy after winning a contract with Levy Restaurants to be the coffee and doughnut provider at Qwest Field.

Starbucks has joined the crusade to save Seattle's July 4 fireworks show over Lake Union, pledging up to $125,000 in matching funds to the cause Thursday evening. Big pledges also came from Microsoft and other local businesses.

By 10 p.m., the effort almost had the $500,000 it needs to keep the show going, Nick Perry reported.

Update 4/2/2010: And the show will go on.

Diane Daggatt at McAdams Wright Ragen spotted this April Fool's Day blog post from Starbucks, touting its new Plenta (128-ounce) and Micra (2-ounce) sizes.

In the real world, still no word on when the 31-ounce drinks Starbucks is testing in Phoenix and Tampa might arrive in Seattle. They're called Trenta, which is Italian for thirty.

"Starbucks' combination of a somewhat-pious corporate persona and its massive growth has made it an apparently irresistible jumping-off point for all kinds of debates and meditations," Rob Walker wrote in a New York Times Sunday magazine item on Starbucks and the gun debate.

In what appears to be a gratuitous swipe, the piece says that when sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term "third place," that place between work and home that Starbucks wants to be, "It seems fair to say that Starbucks is not what he had in mind." (Maybe the Times is upset that Starbucks is now carrying The Wall Street Journal in 450 New York stores?)

He also points out that civil rights protests often focused on restaurants and hotels and says, "Starbucks, in more ways than one, is shorthand for 'everywhere.'" That makes it a target for both sides in the gun debate, he wrote.

If that's true, I wonder why open carry advocates hung out first at Peet's Coffee? OpenCarry.org co-founder Mike Stollenwerk of Virginia said they switched to Starbucks only after Peet's banned their openly carried guns.

In fresher political news, French president Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that "his choice of espresso machine be provided" at a visit to Columbia University yesterday, the New York Post reports. Unfortunately, it does not report which machine that is.

If you don't want to sit through the two-hour replay of Starbucks' annual meeting, check out these great video clips from Seattle Times video producer Genevieve Alvarez. Here's a 7-minute overview, which gets fun around 4:45 with short snippets of the performances and some shareholder questions, including a woman who asked for a job:

And CEO Howard Schultz answering questions about the gun issue that activists have tried to pull Starbucks into:

The smoothie chain's shares are up more than 10 percent on a rumor that Starbucks is interested in buying the California-based company, Bloomberg reports. It says the rumor originated at TheFlyOnTheWall.com, a site that's so exclusive it wants your credit card information for the free 30-day trial.

Neither company has commented on the rumor to Bloomberg.

After tweeting and blogging about the annual meeting yesterday, I wrote a story for today's paper that touches on the failed recycling proposal that the As You Sow Foundation is already talking about reviving, Starbucks' new growth strategy that costs about $500 million a year instead of $1 billion, and CEO Howard Schultz's mistake in telling shareholders repeatedly that loaded guns are not allowed in its stores.

Seattle Times columnist -- and local author -- Jon Talton weighed in on Starbucks' first-ever dividend, announced yesterday morning. Talton says the company seems to have "crossed the Rubicon from being a sweet young 'growth' stock to accepting its position as a mature, even a 'value,' stock," and that that's a good thing.

That's higher than similar proposals from the As You Sow Foundation have gotten from shareholders of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo over the past several years. The measure called for Starbucks to look into doing more with recycling and recycled content in containers.

Votes of 5 to 9 percent pushed those companies to talk to the foundation. Coke subsequently set a goal of recycling half the cans and bottles it sells in the U.S., or their equivalent volume, by 2015.

Tomorrow, Pepsi will announce a similar goal to be reached by 2018, As You Sow's director of corporate social responsibility, Conrad MacKerron, told Starbucks shareholders during a question-and-answer session this afternoon.

Starbucks recommended shareholders vote against the proposal, saying it already has a recycling strategy. Most shareholder proposals fail, because companies like Starbucks are owned mostly by mutual funds and other institutions that vote the way corporate boards recommend.

Shareholder Gail Trezise of Seattle, who attends the company's annual meeting each year, said she did not understand why Starbucks would not want to look into doing more.

"Why not?" she asked.

The paper wrote last year about Pocock, a jazz singer and pianist from Newport High School.

After Ariel, there'll be a surprise celebrity performance. Meeting just began (10:05 a.m.) and is scheduled to run two-and-a-half hours. Follow me on Twitter, and check out @Sona23's great front-row pictures.

Investors are happy, sending shares up after this morning's news.

Longtime shareholder Delores Amber, of Dupont, said, "It's a start." She's glad the stock has risen over the past year, in contrast to declines over the previous couple years. Mainly, though, she holds shares to see CEO Howard Schultz on stage at McCaw Hall.

"He's such a showman," she said. "If I didn't have the boss I have, I'd want Howard Schultz to be my boss, because he's so positive, upbeat and forward-thinking."

Starbucks will webcast it live beginning at 10 a.m. It's scheduled to run until about 12:30 p.m. and includes a surprise performer. Check out the hordes flooding into McCaw Hall now.

What do you think of Starbucks' first-ever dividend?

After decades of keeping its cash to grow, Starbucks is giving some back to shareholders.

On April 23, it will pay a dividend of 10 cents a share to shareholders of record April 7. The company has about 743 million shares outstanding, 76 percent owned by mutual funds and other institutions.

Starbucks expects to pay 35 to 40 percent of its per-share profit each quarter in dividends.

Its board also authorized the repurchase of 15 million shares, on top of 6.3 million shares that are available for repurchase under previous authorizations.

"Starbucks solid cash position and cash flow outlook enable the Company to invest in future profitable growth through stores, innovation and new platforms, while also returning cash to our shareholders through the initiation of a dividend and future share repurchases," CFO Troy Alstead said in a press release.

The company has more cash than it used to, partly because it is growing much slower. At the end of December, it had $1.3 billion in cash, up from $600 million three months earlier and $357 million a year earlier. After debt of $550 million, it had about $757 million in net cash in late December.

Starbucks closed more coffee shops than it opened during its last fiscal year, ended in September. It still has 16,700 stores worldwide and plans to open another 300 this fiscal year.

Largely because of massive cost cuts including big layoffs, Starbucks' profit rose 24 percent to $391 million last fiscal year, then more than tripled during the first quarter to $241 million.

The dividend news is a double joy for investors. After years of trading low, the stock lately has approached a 52-week high of $25.66; it closed Tuesday at $25.41. Shares remain well below their all-time high of nearly $40 in mid-2006.

Starbucks expects 3,800 employees and other shareholders at its annual meeting this morning at McCaw Hall at Seattle Center. It will be webcast live beginning at 10 a.m.

Before moving to annual meeting speculation, check out the long line for free pastries at a Starbucks near Seattle University this morning. The top picture is the first half of the line; bottom picture is the second half. Shortly before the deal ended at 10:30 a.m., the pastry cases I saw still had plenty of doughnuts and pastries.

Tomorrow, 3,800 shareholders are expected at Starbucks' annual meeting, which typically snarls traffic around Seattle Center before it starts at 10 a.m. and after it ends around noon.

The meeting -- part financial, but largely a show for Starbucks fans -- will be webcast live beginning at 10 a.m. from McCaw Hall. The company says it will issue two press releases, one before the event starts. Any guesses about what those might be?

Possibly a shareholder dividend, given the company's $1.3 billion in cash? At last year's meeting, CFO Troy Alstead said Starbucks would "evaluate a dividend as a possibility."

Starbucks' annual meeting often includes a celebrity performance. Last year was low-key with no celebrities, but a very busy meeting the year before included a performance by k.d. lang and the news that Starbucks was buying Ballard-based Clover and expected to have the machines in 30 percent of its stores that year. In 2006, Tony Bennett sang. Any ideas who might perform tomorrow?

Starbucks goes through 3 billion paper cups and 1 billion plastic cups a year, and a shareholder proposal asks that it do more to recycle them, plus its bottles and cans.

The result should be available at Wednesday's annual meeting, which will be webcast live at 10 a.m. Such proposals almost never win, because big companies like Starbucks are owned mostly by mutual funds and other institutions that follow corporate guidance. (The proposal and Starbucks' "vote no" recommendation are in a previous post.) As You Sow hopes the vote will get the company into talks.

Still, it raises interesting questions, many of which I covered in today's paper, including thoughts from Stumptown Coffee and former Starbucks store manager Tino Ganacias, pictured, who now owns Empire Espresso Bar in Columbia City.

How would you vote on the proposal? And do you think Starbucks investors should get a dividend, given its $1.3 billion in cash? At last year's meeting, CFO Troy Alstead said it would "evaluate a dividend as a possibility."

Finally, will Starbucks have enough pastries on Tuesday? It's giving out coupons for a free pastry with drink purchase until 10:30 a.m. During a similar promotion last summer, a lot of shops ran out before that time. The deal does not include some stores, like those in airports, Barnes & Noble bookstores and much of Hawaii.

Starbucks hosts its 15th Hot Java Cool Jazz concert at the Paramount Theatre at 7:30 p.m. on Friday. Tickets are $15; $8 for students and seniors.

Proceeds support music education programs for the schools that participate, which this year are Garfield, Roosevelt, Edmonds-Woodway, Newport and Mountlake Terrace. The first three bands are among only 15 nationwide that will compete in the 15th annual Essentially Ellington competition and festival in New York City, May 8-10. Garfield and Roosevelt each have won that competition three times.

When she asked a question at Starbucks' shareholders meeting last year, Melody Overton -- better known as StarbucksMelody.com -- was "thrown off guard by Uncle Howard's quick thinking to take it as an opportunity to (nicely) tease Miss Melody O, by jokingly saying 'you're famous' and that 'everybody knows Melody'. It was a disconcerting experience: this year I won't ask a question unless I have a good one," she writes.

So, she's asking readers what they'd ask Howard Schultz directly if they could, in hopes of coming up with the best question for the shareholders meeting next Wednesday at Seattle Center.

There are a few rules:

• Must be relevant to Starbucks


• Ideally should be of interest to more than one stakeholder group (shareholders, customers, partners)


• Must be open-ended - I'm not going to ask a yes/no question. This is direct examination, not cross. [.... Melody says, like the lawyer she is when she's not blogging and tweeting about Starbucks.]


• Cannot be argumentative and contentious for no apparent reason, or asked for the sake of sensationalism. (I'm not going to ask about corporate jets, $12 mil salary, guns, or baristas in OC who sue, ...for example).

(Photo of Melody outside 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea is by The Seattle Times' Ken Lambert.)

In what appears to be more of a marketing than a product move, Starbucks will formally allow customers to customize their Frappuccinos beginning in May, the company told The Wall Street Journal.

They'll be able to request soy milk rather than dairy, decaffeinated coffee, light syrup, more syrup, no whipped cream, more espresso -- all things that are available now, except the soy milk Frappuccino base and a decaffeinated option.

Chief Marketing Officer Annie Young-Scrivner told the Journal that Starbucks hopes customization will attract a younger crowd. It's been working on this roll-out for years, and to prepare, it's training baristas and bringing in quieter blenders.

Update 3/18/2010: There's a helpful conversation about this at StarbucksGossip.com. There and elsewhere, it's becoming clear that the new Frappuccino base mix coming in May will not include dairy or coffee, which means Starbucks will start using the fresh coffee and milk in Frappuccinos that it uses in other drinks. That's why decaf and soy will now be options. And the new base mix is free of high-fructose corn syrup.

David Palmer at UBS says it's time to buy Starbucks stock, so that's what the market is doing, sending shares up 4 percent to close at $25.27 today, near its 52-week high of $25.37.

Palmer changed his fiscal 2010 earnings estimate from $1.09 a share to $1.14. Last year, Starbucks earned 52 cents a share.

He thinks its instant coffee, Via, which is rolling out this spring in the U.K. and Japan, could add 15 cents a share or more to profits over the next "three-plus" years. One risk, he wrote, is McDonald's roll-out this year of frappes and smoothies that could take some Starbucks market share.

In contrast, RBC Capital Markets analyst Larry Miller told Forbes -- in an article strangely headlined "Starbucks Burns Beans, Stock Head Uptown" -- that he thinks Starbucks' store traffic could wane in the coming months.

Jon Talton's column yesterday highlighted how difficult it's becoming for big companies like Starbucks to stay out of politics. Of course, they're already in DC to some extent -- Starbucks spent $740,000 on lobbying last year, according to OpenSecrets.org -- but they typically try to side-step controversial issues like the gun debate.

Talton doubts they can will be able to remain neutral.

"Across the spectrum, institutions have lost credibility. Activism is on the rise and partisans demand that sides be chosen," he wrote.

Continuing economic pain will force their hand, he argued. "[I]f unemployment and foreclosures remain high while living standards continue to erode, more people will be looking for someone to blame. And all the clever legalisms and inoffensive marketing may not save companies from being pulled into the domestic political battle."

For years, Starbucks has offered just The New York Times and a local paper or two at its company-owned stores, which don't include shops in airports and grocery stores.

Beginning today, it added USA Today to the mix. Advertising Age reports that, "USA Today actually helped introduce newspapers to Starbucks back in the 1990s, but by 2000 was cast out in favor of The Times, which struck a three-year exclusivity deal that was reportedly paid for with ad space to promote the chain."

Starbucks has gotten more attractive as its reach has grown, Larry Lindquist, senior VP of circulation at USA Today, told Advertising Age. "Starbucks is a lot bigger now, with a lot more stores, so it's more important to us now than it was to us then," he said.

The New York Times told Advertising Age it's not worried. "Ten years ago when we first negotiated the contract with Starbucks, it was a different universe," a spokeswoman said. "Competition has increased exponentially. But, we have a strong affinity with our readers and believe they will continue to select The New York Times, just as they do now when they have a choice."

I haven't been to Starbucks yet today, so maybe someone can tell me: Is the chain putting USA Today or The New York Times on top? I know from years of experience that it's not the local paper.

Update 3:45 p.m.: Thanks to PR pro Aaron Blank, who says USA Today is on the bottom. NYT is still on top, and The Seattle Times is in the middle around here.

A few things I didn't post while sneezing my head off this week:

• Remember that rooibos espresso I mentioned a while back? Inner Chapters Bookstore & Cafe in South Lake Union/Cascade ordered some, and they're using it to make everything from Mexican mochas to soy cappuccinos with honey and cinnamon, and -- if you even remotely like tea -- the stuff is tasty.
• "The current state of specialty coffee retailing bugs the hell out of me," coffee veteran Kevin Knox writes on his blog, Caffeinated Calm. Knox was in charge of coffee quality for Starbucks from 1987 to 1993, then a coffee buyer for Allegro Coffee in Boulder, Colo. The post includes great historical notes, like how appalled George Howell was at Starbucks' dark roasts during a Seattle visit in 1990, but mostly it's a criticism of the too-cool-for-you coffee community. "What I see in the coffee offerings of most of the so-called 'third wave' roasters is an approach to retailing that at its worst is both solipsistic and narcissistic," he writes.
• Coffee consultant Sarah Dooley e-mailed to say that Rosettas for Relief, a latte art competition last month to benefit Haiti, raised $2,375.97 in Seattle. Andrew Milstead of the Urban Coffee Lounge had the winning pour.
• Starbucks spent $740,000 lobbying in Washington, D.C., last year, according to OpenSecrets.org. One person, Lori Otto, did most of the work, but a cadre of lobbyists at K&L Gates also pitched in. About $190,000 was spent in the fourth quarter on foreign trade, corporate accounting issues and other matters, according to a report filed with the House clerk's office, AP said.
• If the charms of Facebook, Twitter and your Android phone lose their luster, check out what the marketing wizards at Foursquare have cooked up: It's a partnership with Starbucks that gives customers -- free coffee? free Wi-Fi? No! A barista badge, whatever that is. The New York Times blogged about the arrangement, which goes beyond letting the world know what you had for breakfast and how it's sitting. With Foursquare, you can broadcast where you are, and get a barista badge after "checking in" at five separate Starbucks shops. Frequent customers will get rewards, Starbucks' Chris Bruzzo told the Times, but it might be something "more meaningful" than free coffee -- like invitations to special events, photo sharing or online reputation scores.
• The New York Times also wrote a nice piece on efforts by Counter Culture and other roasters to bring better flavor to decaffeinated coffee.
• "The KICK of coffee without the cup!" is the promise from Le Whif, a new coffee from Paris that you inhale rather than drink, the Chicago Tribune reported. To be clear, you breathe Le Whif through your mouth, so it's not cheap cocaine. The brainchild of a Harvard professor, it debuted in New York and Cambridge, Mass., this week.

• The Tribune also reported that Costco is no longer roasting coffee at one of its Chicago locations. Who knew they roasted anywhere?
• Someone drove from London to Manchester -- almost 200 miles -- in a car powered by coffee beans.
• Because of the name, I feel like I should mention that it's Coffee Party weekend. On Saturday, thousands of people around the country will gather at coffeehouses and other locations to craft an alternative to the Tea Party movement -- or a lot of alternatives. At the Coffee Party web site, you can plug in your zip code and find a meeting nearby. Looks like events are planned at Cafe Allegro in the University District, near Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland and at Starbucks' Roy Street Coffee and Tea on Capitol Hill.
• Many thanks to Seattle Times content director Cory Haik for the photo capturing the feisty cup message from Short Stop Coffee in Ballard.

"What all the third wave coffee people have in common is a thinly veiled revulsion at Starbucks and its rivals, in particular the way they overroast their beans," Josh Ozersky writes in Time magazine.

His description of third wave coffee -- a term even die-hard third wavers can't agree about --sidesteps the sticky definition and gets right into personality: "Wait, you haven't heard of the third wave? Get with the program! In cities across America, a fervid generation of caffeine evangelists are changing the way we drink coffee. They tend to be male, heavily bearded, zealous and meticulous in what they do. And the coffee they produce is as much an improvement over Starbucks and its rivals as Starbucks was over Taster's Choice."

Besides quoting Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson, Ozersky lists Intelligentsia, Counter Culture and Dallis Coffee as third wavers, saying they "were seeking to import beans from single farms, roasting them less rather than more and generally doing the things that separate this movement from its Seattle-based progenitors in the '70s."

It's a quick and lively look at the third wave, with no mention of present-day Seattle, as if Starbucks is all we have to offer. Have we really fallen that far, or did Time just forget to mention Espresso Vivace and other great Seattle roasters?

Starbucks will start selling Via instant coffee in the United Kingdom on March 8 and in Japan on April 14, after what appears to have been a successful roll-out in the United States and Canada last fall. It has been testing the single-serve coffee packets in London for months.

Starbucks does not disclose sales for single products, but Via has gotten great reviews from some users, including Backpacker Magazine, which calls it "the best instant coffee ever" and gave it an editor's choice award for 2010. Editors took Via on a 100-mile trek through Switzerland, where they made this video while sipping it at the base of the Swiss mountain Eiger:

Via is sold in Starbucks stores, Costco, Target, REI and on United Airlines. It's being rolled into grocery stores this year.

Starbucks figures the U.K. and Japan account for more than $4 billion in instant coffee sales a year. Globally, it says instant coffee is 40 percent of yearly coffee sales, or about $21 billion.

Starbucks explained CEO Howard Schultz's $12.1 million pay package in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday, after requests from institutional investors and an institutional shareholder advisory service. The filing addressed a $1 million discretionary bonus given by the board after Schultz was left out of the regular bonus plan.

He merited the bonus because he exceeded the board's expectations, the filing said, citing among other things Starbucks' 21 percent boost in earnings-per-share and $580 million in cost savings during fiscal 2009.

As previously reported, Schultz's 25 percent pay boost came during a year in which Starbucks closed hundreds of stores and reduced its work force by 19 percent. Sales fell 6 percent, but profit rose 24 percent to $390.8 for the fiscal year ended Sept. 27, 2009. During that time, its stock price climbed 40 percent to almost $20 a share.

In its explanation, Starbucks said that when the board asked Schultz to return as CEO in January 2008, he did not take part in its bonus plan, but instead was given a base salary and stock options. In the end, the options accounted for $9.5 million, or about 79 percent of his total compensation.

In early 2009, Schultz asked that his annual salary be reduced from $1.19 million to $6,900, but that was part way through the fiscal year, so his salary for the year actually came to $643,954. It was raised to $1.3 million for fiscal 2010.

Schultz greatly exceeded the board's expectations, the filing said. "He drove the Company to achieve strong financial results for the year despite the extraordinary challenges facing the Company in a period of unprecedented global financial turmoil, and made significant progress in transforming Starbucks and returning the Company to sustainable, profitable growth while preserving its values and guiding principles."

"In view of Mr. Schultz's extraordinary performance and in light of the Company's improved financial results, the compensation committee determined that Mr. Schultz merited a discretionary bonus award of $1 million," the filing said.

It also addressed the necessity of the $680,961 Starbucks for security services for Schultz and said that he has agreed to forego an annual cash payment he has been given for years to buy life insurance. Last year, that payment was $236,250.

Interestingly, the filing says Schultz has led Starbucks as its founder, a title the board gave him years ago but which is not accurate. The real founders are Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl.

Update 3/5/2010: A commenter wrote, "Actually Schultz did found the company now known as Starbucks. Il Giornale is the company Schultz founded in 1985-86 and in 1987 bought the Starbucks name from the original company when the founders put it up for sale." When Schultz bought Starbucks -- its six stores and roasting plant, not just the name -- it was bigger than Il Giornale's three stores, but that's an interesting point. I wonder if that's what the board was thinking when it named him founder.

The Brady Campaign wants Starbucks to ban guns in its stores, and delivered 28,000 signatures to its Seattle headquarters today after a press conference near Pike Place Market.

Before the event, Starbucks issued a release asking not to be put in the middle of the gun controversy.

"They are in the middle," Brady Campaign spokesman Brian Malte said at the event. "They chose not to bar guns in their stores so far."

A few dozen people attended, including gun rights advocates who regularly interrupted the press conference with cries of "liar!" and "fear monger!"

Dueling posters carried various slogans, including "Espresso shots not shotguns" and "Gun control kills."

The Brady Campaign asked Starbucks to ban guns after Open Carry advocates appeared at its stores in California to make a point about their right to openly carry guns. Other chains where they met, including Peet's Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen, have issued notices that guns are not allowed -- either at all or on display -- in their shops unless you're a police officer.

Like many chains including McDonald's, Starbucks complies with local laws.

Starbucks asked in a press release this morning that groups on both sides of the open-carry gun issue "refrain from putting Starbucks or our partners [employees] into the middle of this divisive issue."

It's responding to a public debate that's coming to Seattle this morning, when the Brady Campaign will hold a press conference near Pike Place Market before taking 28,000 signatures to Starbucks' headquarters to try to push the company to ban guns in its stores.

The Brady Campaign is reacting to Open Carry advocates who have appeared at Starbucks stores in other states to make a point about their right to openly carry guns. Other chains where they have appeared, including Peet's Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen, have complied with the Brady Campaign request.

Starbucks said in the release that it complies with local laws. "In this case, 43 of the 50 U.S. states have open carry weapon laws. Where these laws don't exist, we comply with laws that prohibit the open carrying of weapons. The political, policy and legal debates around these issues belong in the legislatures and courts, not in our stores," it said.

StarbucksGossip.com reports that Starbucks is testing 32-ounce 31-ounce iced coffees in Phoenix. Besides knocking Starbucks' already-whopping 20-ounce or "venti" drink on its rear, the new size comes with a new name: Trenta.

Trenta means thirty in Italian. Apparently the drink is even bigger than its name, and it's hard to picture the Italian who would relish a 32-ounce 31-ounce coffee. But we're in the world of Starbucks speak here, where talls are smalls, and smalls aren't even on the menu.

Update 2:20 p.m.: Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz wrote to say the company is testing 31-ounce drinks in Phoenix and Tampa. The Trenta size is for iced tea and coffee only, not Frappuccino or other drinks. Unsweetened, those drinks have fewer than 5 calories. Sweetened, they're under 200 calories. Who wants to bet people order Trenta Frappuccinos anyway?

Remember my blog post a few weeks ago about the Brady Campaign collecting signatures to push Starbucks into banning guns in its shops? The campaign has gained national attention with recent stories by the Associated Press, ABC News and Gawker (including a photo of a rifleshotgun-toting customer inside a Starbucks), and it comes to Seattle tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. for a press conference near Pike Place Market, site of the first Starbucks store (and the one Starbucks calls its first).

Why Starbucks and not McDonald's or Burger King or Caribou Coffee or any other chain you might name? "The Open Carry activists chose Starbucks. We didn't," said Doug Pennington, spokesman for the Brady Campaign.

OpenCarry.org describes itself as "a pro-gun Internet community focused on the right to openly carry properly holstered handguns in daily American life." They sometimes meet in public places to exercise their right to carry unconcealed guns.

The Brady Campaign has gone to several chains where Open Carry meets to ask management to ban guns in their stores. Peet's Coffee & Tea, Buckhorn Grill and California Pizza Kitchen have banned either guns or concealed guns, but Starbucks has not.

Thus the public petition, which now has 28,000 signatures, up from 15,000 a few weeks ago. Brady activists will deliver the signatures to Starbucks' headquarters tomorrow after the press conference. It will also hand out forms here and in other cities for interested customers to fill out and give store managers.

Update 2:45 p.m.: Enough people have e-mailed that I'm going to point out what the Gawker photo says if you click on it. Uploaded in 2006, it's someone in the Navy in Kuwait, where according to its cutline, weapons were required off base. There was apparently a saying, "Grab your guns, we're going to Starbucks."

Starbucks and its business partner, SSP, opened the first Starbucks coffeehouse in Sweden today, at Stockholm-Arlanda Airport (terminal 5, gate area 1-10, if you're headed that way). It's Starbucks' 53rd country, including the United States.

"We have great respect for the rich coffee culture in Sweden and we look forward to working with SSP to bring the Starbucks Experience to our customers in Sweden," Buck Hendrix, president of Starbucks Europe, Middle East and Africa, said in a release.

Starbucks and SSP partnered in summer 2008 and have opened stores in the UK, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Of Starbucks' roughly 16,700 stores worldwide, 47 percent are run by business partners like SSP, many in airports and grocery stores. It's a model the coffee company uses a lot in foreign markets, where 62 percent of its 5,525 coffee shops are "licensed," which means they are run by a business partner.

Starbucks struck another blow in the fast-food coffee war on Tuesday, saying it will sell its Seattle's Best Coffee drinks at 7,250 Burger King shops nationwide by September.

When added to Starbucks' nearly 11,200 U.S. coffee shops and the 9,000 Subway locations where Seattle's Best began selling last year, the coffee chain now has 27,450 U.S. outlets -- easily outnumbering McDonald's in an espresso tangle that the burger chain launched last year when it rolled out its McCafe drinks and advertising campaign.

The Seattle coffee giant has fought back with billboards, television commercials and the expansion of Seattle's Best Coffee, a lesser-known brand it bought in 2003 that is known for having lighter-roasted coffee than Starbucks.

It is a strategy shift for Starbucks, which once supplied some McDonald's stores in the Pacific Northwest with brewed coffee from Seattle's Best Coffee, but has mostly steered away from fast food.

Starbucks declined to widen its relationship with McDonald's a few years ago, when the burger chain approached it about supplying espresso for what became the McCafe roll-out.

"We passed because it simply was not a good brand fit, and we're confident that was the right decision," Starbucks spokeswoman Deb Trevino said last spring.

Terms of the latest agreement were not disclosed, but Burger King will sell Seattle's Best Blend coffee, hot or iced, with the option of vanilla and mocha flavors and whipped topping. The drinks will cost $1 to $2.79.

Taking the holiday to wrap up loose ends, like:

• The New York Times calls the Seattle-built Slayer espresso machine charismatic and beautiful.


• A reader wants to know where she can find a cup -- not a pound -- of Kona coffee around here. Anyone know?


• Mighty-O Donuts hosts free tours on Thursday and Friday (Feb. 18 and 19) at 10 a.m. Sign up at 2110 N. 55th Street (where the tours are), or 206-547-0335, or info@mightyo.com.


• Lincoln Graham represents Seattle with his photo of a Caffe Ladro barista reflected in an espresso machine at PictoryMag.com (scroll to No. 20).


• Sarah Gilbert at Daily Finance considers how blending coffee and turning up the roaster can save money and hurt flavor.


• Starbucks draws attention from the research firm Morningstar, which gave its debt an A-, and TheStreet.com, which says its stock is overpriced.


• A Starbucks customer with Tourette's syndrome sues for alleged discrimination after an outburst, The Palm Beach Post reports.


• And someone actually writes a blog about putting weird things in coffee -- eggs, curry, salmon cream cheese. There are photos.

At the same time Starbucks is getting rid of its gold card, which cost $25 a year and was used by Starbucks' most loyal customers to get 10 percent discounts, the company is discontinuing its Duetto Visa card too. The Visa program began in 2003 with Bank One -- now part of JPMorgan Chase (like WaMu is).

Starbucks, Chase and Canadian card issuer RBC have "decided not to renew the credit card partnership," said Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz. The stored value that customers earned on their cards will be sent to them in the form of a Starbucks card.

Some cardholders are unhappy about losing another chance to earn rewards at their favorite coffee shop chain. "I had even put the kids' tuition on the Duetto card to get the 'Starbucks bucks' rewards that were redeemable in stores," a reader told The Consumerist.

His reaction is mild compared to the flames coming from people losing their gold card discount and rewards. They do not dig the new, one-size-fits-all Starbucks card, which at its highest level offers a free drink after every 15 purchases. A single purchase includes everything bought at one time, even if it's three drinks.

Geoff Saunders of Queen Anne e-mailed to say that his gold card expires in a few weeks. "After that, I expect that the independent stores will get the majority of my business. The independents, as you know, all offer a 10-drink punch card, but Starbucks will offer a free drink after 15 visits. In this economy, that doesn't play well," he wrote.

He also doesn't like Starbucks' new method. It requires that purchases be made with stored value on the Starbucks cards, which some see as a no-interest loan to the company. And once the 15 transactions have occurred, Starbucks mails customers a coupon. "Snail mailing a piece of cardboard is hardly environmentally sensitive, and in this tech savvy-town it seems antiquated," Saunders wrote.

He points to several signs of customer revolt, including the web site Starbucks Revolt and Facebook pages called "New Starbucks Gold Card Sucks!", "Boycott Starbucks Gold Card", and "New Gold Card - No 10%".

Similar sentiments appear at My Starbucks Idea, a site run by the coffee company to garner ideas from customers.

Crain's New York Business reports that after two seasons serving McCafe beverages at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, McDonald's has bowed out and Starbucks has stepped in.

The burger chain's initial appearance at Fashion Week a year ago surprised fashionistas who are used to more opulent fare, Crain's reports, but by the time the fall season rolled around, it was accepted and understood that lower price points are in vogue.

McDonald's served more than 13,000 cups of espresso and coffee by midway through last February's Fashion Week, "exceeding expectations," Crain's said in a phrase that made me wonder if I was reliving a Starbucks earnings call.

The chains don't disclose how much they pay to participate in Fashion Week, which officially began today. Starbucks is serving Frappuccino Lite, "a limited-calorie option created especially for Fashion Week," Crain's wrote.

Beginning next month, Starbucks will adopt a brewing method called the pour-over at stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The pour-over is basically a plastic or ceramic cone that holds coffee grounds, over which you pour water that drips into a cup below.

It's been used for years by campers and others wanting a quick single cup of coffee, and some coffeehouses -- notably Blue Bottle in San Francisco and Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea of Chicago (thank you, StarbucksGossip.com) -- have used it for years. Recently, it's become popular at independent coffeehouses in Seattle that want to offer brewing variety.

Starbucks is introducing pour-overs as a way for baristas to serve a quick, fresh cup of decaf or bold coffee when there's not a pot already brewed.

The equipment won't be the fancy four-hole set-up that barista Alex Tamez of 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea (owned by Starbucks) is using in the top photo. She's pouring into Hario plastic cups that have swirled sides and a larger hole at the bottom than better-known brands like Melitta. Hario is considered one of the best pour-over brands by places that have done pour-overs for years, including Intelligentsia (which keeps winning barista competitions but doesn't have a shop in Seattle). Hario is also featured in a great blog that Tamez recommends called PouredOver.

At 15th Avenue, they use Hario filter paper and wet the filters -- sort of rinsing them out -- before making each cup. The result with my 8-ounce El Salvador Estate Pacamara this morning was "yum!"

15th Avenue also received a set of the new pour-over equipment that's being delivered to U.S. and Canadian Starbucks stores this month (bottom photo). It's not Melitta, but it looks like it, with straight rather than swirled "guides" inside and smaller holes at the bottom than Hario.

The equipment has been tested at a few stores in Colorado for the past year and will not be "customer-facing," according to spokesman Alan Hilowitz. For Starbucks, the pour-over will be about the efficiency of making a quick single cup of coffee rather than the theater of the pour.

Update 2/11/2010: An interesting point that Diane Daggatt at McAdams Wright Ragen made in an e-mail to the investment firm's clients: "This may not seem like a big deal, but it certainly will not be as costly as the $11,000 Clover Brewing machines that are being rolled out to more than 250 stores in 2010."

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is asking people to sign a petition telling Starbucks to keep guns out of its shops, because they say they can't get a straight answer out of the Seattle company about its gun policy. The petition has more than 15,000 signatures.

"Our California activists are responding to the activities of Open Carry activists in the Bay Area, who noticed Open Carry demonstrations at Peet's, California Pizza Kitchen and Starbucks," said Doug Pennington, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign.

OpenCarry.org describes itself as "a pro-gun Internet community focused on the right to openly carry properly holstered handguns in daily American life." They sometimes meet in public places to exercise their right to carry unconcealed guns.

When the Brady Campaign asked each company for its gun policies, Peet's Coffee and California Pizza Kitchen promptly issued notices that guns are not allowed -- either at all or on display -- in their shops unless you're a police officer.

Starbucks hasn't done that. "So far, Starbucks hasn't said what seems to be an obvious kind of policy, that 'no guns are allowed in our stores unless you're a police officer,'" Pennington said.

In a written statement, the company said, "For Starbucks, the safety of our customers and partners is our paramount concern. We have existing security protocols in place to handle situations related to safety in our stores. We will continue to adhere closely to local, state and federal laws and the counsel of law enforcement regarding this issue."

Based on that, it's hard to know whether Starbucks allows guns in shops or not. But if it's going strictly by the law, then in many states including Washington, it does allow unconcealed firearms.

Update 2/10/2010: Politics aside, this submission in the comment string is hilarious: "Clint Eastwood voice: I know what your thinkin'. Did I have six shots of espresso or only 5? Well, being that I'm really wired up now and have a nervous itchy trigger finger, just ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky?.......Well do you punk?"

Update 2/11/2010: The petition now has more than 25,000 signatures, and check out the Los Angeles Times' editorial cartoon about the issue.

It's cheap, it's simple and it's the latest rage in coffee brewing. StarbucksMelody.com writes all about Starbucks' efforts to expand pour-over coffee outside its stealth Starbucks stores on Capitol Hill.

A pour-over is like taking the basket of a Mr. Coffee, where you put the grounds, and putting just that above your cup, then pouring hot water over it and letting it drip into the cup. People do it when they're camping, and it's becoming popular at independent coffee shops.

Starbucks uses something like Melitta cone filters, not the ceramic cones favored by high-falutin' places like Blue Bottle in San Francisco. On Capitol Hill, Starbucks lines them up in a four-hole configuration. Many people love them; some really do not (hello, Nick) and much prefer a siphon-pot bar like this beauty.

A new cup at Starbucks' U.S. stores features a heart and a reminder about the company's commitment to the (Red), an organization that partners with big companies like Nike, Gap and Starbucks to help people with HIV in Africa.

So far, (Red) has generated $140 million for HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Starbucks doesn't break out its portion, but it has held various promotions for the project, and one dollar of each of its (Red) branded coffee beans, tumblers and water bottles goes to the fund.

The limited-time heart cups were introduced today and include a message encouraging customers to visit www.StarbucksLoveProject.com to create their own Valentine's Day-inspired drawing. For every drawing submitted, Starbucks will contribute five cents -- up to $50,000 -- to the (Red) Global Fund.

Wicked weather in the eastern U.S. makes me happy to be in mild Seattle.

My recent trip east was delayed by a storm, but eventually I made it to Columbus, Ohio, where Cup O Joe is still the most happening coffee shop in German Village. Its coffee is roasted locally by Stauf's Coffee Roasters in Grandview, which now owns Cup O Joe, according to my barista that night, Randy Niemi (top photo).

Other photos from the trip: I couldn't figure out what the coffee truck (below, somewhere in Kentucky) was carrying. Brewed coffee? How old? And, at the bottom, a Seattle's Best Coffee in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was selling ice cream sundaes with frozen yogurt from Freshens ($4.10 a sundae). Is that common at SBC? I'd never seen it before.

While I was gone, I missed Starbucks' announcement that it will sell ready-to-drink beverages in Europe. It didn't name which drinks, but its biggest RTD beverage is the Frappuccino. And CEO Howard Schultz told the Mirror that the U.K. economy is rebounding faster than the U.S. Starbucks will open 30 locally focused shops there this year, the paper reported.

Starbucks also asked mayors and other city leaders nationwide to improve commercial and residential recycling systems, which is interesting in light of the current recycling proposal before shareholders. The great variance in recycling programs across the country "presents a significant barrier for a business with more than 11,000 retail locations in the U.S. alone," Starbucks said in the release.

Jones Lang LaSalle wrote in a release that vacancy rates continue to go up in this area because of changes among big tenants. "In the fourth quarter of 2009, Whirlpool and Starbucks vacated over 1.1MM sf of warehouse distribution space negatively effecting vacancy rates for the Puget Sound area," it said.

A recent customer loyalty study by Brand Keys puts Starbucks behind Dunkin' Donuts, and while I was in the Midwest, photographer and traveling coffee blogger Rob Casey was checking out java in Hawaii. Nice!

Update 2/9/2010: Freshens' advertising director e-mailed to say that it co-brands locations with Seattle's Best Coffee at airports in Atlanta and Orlando.

John Harrington, a longtime advocate for responsible investing, has put a proposal before Starbucks shareholders that would force the company to adopt a recycling strategy that would consider aggressive recycled content goals and container recovery goals for plastic, glass, paper and metal containers.

"Starbucks lags behind competitors who sell bottled beverages," according to the proposal, which is at the bottom of this post. "Coca-Cola has set a goal to recover 50 percent of all plastic and aluminum containers it sells annually by 2015. Nestle Waters has pledged to recover 60 percent of the plastic bottles it sells by 2018. Starbucks has made no such commitment."

It would protect Starbucks' brands and boost the company's reputation, it says.

Starbucks' board of directors recommends voting against the proposal, saying the company already has a comprehensive recycling strategy, which is detailed in its global responsibility report.

It has reduced the carbon footprint of its cold cups by 45 percent through materials changes and cup weight reduction, the board said in a statement that's at the bottom of this post. It introduced a recycled-content cup sleeve to reduce "double cupping," and has an average of 65 percent recycled fibers in non-cup paper goods.

Goals include having 100 percent recyclable or compostable cups by 2012, in-store recycling for customers in all the stores where Starbucks controls waste management by 2015, and a quarter of its beverages served in reusable containers by 2015.

Starbucks ready-to-drink beverages (like bottled Frappuccino) represent less than 4 percent of its total retail beverage sales, the board said. "Consequently, Starbucks believes it is most appropriate to focus primarily on sustainable packaging for paper and plastic cups, where we have the largest market share in the specialty coffee industry and the greatest potential to achieve success in changing the entire business sector for the better."

Results of the vote could be available as early as Starbucks' shareholder meeting on March 24.

Both sides of the discussion follow:

Starbucks is laying off the technicians who service its brewing and grinding machines -- fewer than 10 people in the Puget Sound area, according to a former Starbucks technician who is in touch with people there.

Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz said 145 technicians nationally were told in August that their jobs would be phased out. They are receiving severance packages and the first opportunity to apply for open positions in their regions with First Service Networks, the company Starbucks hired to do the technician work.

Over the past couple years, Starbucks has cut more than 18,000 jobs, most recently 130 call-center workers in Seattle whose work was outsourced to Nashville-based Sitel. It also laid off in-house technical trainers and sent that work to Bunn.

When Starbucks opened two coffeehouses on Capitol Hill last year that do not carry the Starbucks name, they were billed as neighborhood-centric spaces without the corporate overlay.

They've accomplished a lot, including gaining admiration from discerning Seattle baristas and regularly hosting local bands and dramatic readings, which 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea promotes on its blog.

Sometimes their community-friendly ideas bump up against corporate, though, and it becomes clear that these spaces are owned by a publicly traded coffee giant and not some eccentric entrepreneur.

Capitol Hill artist Megan Myers found out about that the hard way.

She was approached months ago by Roy Street Coffee and Tea about holding a show there, and it was scheduled to open next weekend. She spent hundreds of dollars creating 18 pieces (including the acrylic on canvas painting pictured above) and promoting the show with printed postcards, then learned it had been canceled by corporate.

After I contacted Starbucks to ask for a comment, they called Myers to say there was a misunderstanding. Her show wasn't really canceled. It won't open next weekend, but at some undecided point in the future, if she is still interested.

Myers is not interested. "I don't feel like that was handled appropriately, and I would rather support and be supported by Capitol Hill local businesses who have been so kind to me in the past," she said.

According to Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz, "There was a miscommunication and the show will be rescheduled. There were just some logistics for the show that needed be taken care of first, but those are being worked out."

Update 2/3/10: Myers has found a new home for her show at Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream & Cafe at 1205 E. Pike St. The opening is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 11, from 6 to 8 p.m., during the Capitol Hill Art Walk. Interesting comments at the CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.

People should stop using these clear, 20-ounce glass water bottles (SKU number 11003503) immediately, as they can shatter when the stopper is being inserted or removed. Starbucks has received eight reports of hand lacerations.

They were sold at Starbucks locations, including some in Safeway and Target stores.

Starbucks asks that the bottles be returned to one of their stores, where customers will receive a refund and a complimentary beverage of any size.

"Cup" is coffee speak for "taste," and it involves sniffing, slurping and comparing a range of coffees. It's the way coffee pros choose beans, and there are other fun terms, like "breaking the crust," which is the layer of coffee grounds that forms at the top of each cup during preparation.

The video below captures it well, but the first-hand experience can't be beat, and Matt Banbury of Starbucks is giving a 30-minute lesson in "cupping" at the Starbucks at 1524 7th Ave. (at Pike) at 1 p.m. today. Maybe an after-lunch pick-me-up?

Here are several Seattle coffeehouses that hold free public cuppings every week:

Victrola Roastery & Cafe, 310 E. Pike Street: Wednesdays at 11 a.m.
Stumptown Coffee Roasters, (in the basement of) 1115 12th Avenue: Daily at 3 p.m.
Roy Street Coffee & Tea, 700 Broadway East: Daily at 10 a.m.
Caffe Vita Coffee Roasting, (behind the roasters and upstairs at) 1005 E. Pike Street: Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m.
15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, 328 15th Avenue E.: Daily at 11 a.m.

If Starbucks has slowed coffee buying in Costa Rica and Guatemala, as Reuters reported, then maybe it's helping make up for it with Peruvian coffee beans.

The Peruvian Coffee Chamber told Bloomberg that Starbucks has boosted buying there, because the quality of the coffee has improved.

Starbucks did not confirm, but spokeswoman May Kulthol told Bloomberg that 78 percent of its coffee came from Latin America in 2008. The company bought about 383 million pounds of coffee that year, according to its global responsibility report, at an average $1.49 a pound.

Reuters reports that Starbucks has reduced purchases of Costa Rican coffee this year. Guatemalan growers said in December that Starbucks was slow buying their coffee, too, and some speculated then that the company was angling for lower prices.

Starbucks' sales were up 4 percent last quarter -- a sign that it still needs lots of coffee -- so it's also possible that the chain just wants less inventory, like many retailers who were burned by having too much in stock when the recession started.

Starbucks told Reuters it buys about 75 percent of its coffee from Latin American growers.

In 2008, the coffee company bought 383 million pounds of coffee, up from 351 million a year earlier, according to its global responsibility report. It paid an average of $1.49 a pound, up from $1.43 a pound a year earlier.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was paid $12.1 million in 2009, an increase of 25 percent from the previous year, according to a securities filing this morning.

The boost came during a year in which Starbucks closed hundreds of stores and slashed costs by $580 million, partly by reducing its work force by 19 percent to 142,000 workers. Fortune magazine this week listed it as the 93rd best company to work for, down from second best in 2005, StarbucksGossip.com reports.

This week, the coffee chain reported its best sales and same-store sales (which measures just stores open more than a year) since early 2008.

Schultz's base salary in 2009 was $643,954, lower than the $1.2 million he received for each of the previous two years, because Schultz requested that his salary be reduced to $6,900 mid-way through the fiscal year.

After receiving no bonus in 2008, Schultz earned a bonus of $1 million last year. He also received option awards worth $9.5 million, compared with $7.7 million in 2008. Schultz's "other compensation" -- for things like insurance premiums, security and retirement plan contributions - rose 22 percent to $935,676.

Other high-paid executives in 2009 included former international operations chief Martin Coles ($2.7 million), U.S. operations president Cliff Burrows ($2.3 million), president of global development Arthur Rubinfeld ($1.8 million) and CFO Troy Alstead ($1.3 million).

Starbucks' annual meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 24, at 10 a.m. at its usual location: Marion Oliver McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's interview with his hometown paper came as the company reported that it tripled its profits in the first fiscal quarter, to $241.5 million or 32 cents per share. Sales climbed 4 percent to $2.72 billion.