Starbucks Closures. 300 Stores, 6700 Jobs - 2/3rds in the US. Business Down 69%

fc123

sinderella wrote: »

Good luck fc123
I am excited for you; a new venture - sounds great! Let us know more when you can.

djm72 I agree that the big chains provide consistency and that is the selling point - people love to know what they are getting - but the fact remains that multi nationals are not concerned about healthy or wholesome products - but then I suppose that plenty of independents are equally as bad - it's just that they have less of a reach and fewer customers.

I'm soory for climbing onto my InternetLand soap box...but the whole connection bewteen it all...the greed, the disregard for people that eat the stuff. the whole 'Holier, Richer and more successful than thou attitude' that they have winds me up.

Starbucks isn't everywhere because it's THe Best, it's everywhere because it could be...through gearing, easy credit, it's base product is gotten from the 3rd world (very handy) and it enjoyed a boom and rode it all the way through to the end.

fc123

djm1972 wrote: »

I'll come back tomorrow after less beer!

I just feel annoyed that so many people feel that it's "cool" or "trendy" to be seen to bash Starbucks/Subway/McDondalds/whoever. Yet all 3 are EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL MULTI-NATIONAL COMPANIES and you do not achieve that success with doing something right - providing something people want - and AT THE RIGHT PRICE.

As this thread demonstrates, the unresearched hostility towards them is extreme, so it is no wonder that people who go out to try and find ill about these companies are able to do so.

Maddoff was an extremely successful investor for his clients for many years (3 decades) and then they found out it was a pyramid scheme.

Same as Starbucks. They just happened to do the massive expansion at a time when it was easy to raise the finance.......they didn't expand because they had loads of requests to open in certain towns.

spuds_2

Apparently, part of the reason Starbucks are closing a lot of branches in Australia is that the Aussies prefer independent coffee shops to big chains. I like Subway, am too tight to go to Starbucks, but agree they are a triumph of marketing over product. Plus as said earlier, I think we are a bit less adventurous in the UK than elsewhere - in a strange town people will go to Subway, McD's, Pizza Hut bcause they know what they will get and what it will cost.

Nomad25

Subways are a sign of decay on the high street, cheap and nasty food, aimed at drunks and skint children, salt, sugar, saturated fat.

:rotfl: that's why they're so popular over here.

fc123 - please post about your new venture when the time is right, I for one, am intrigued at what you're going to do/are doing and lots of luck with it.

Mr_Matey

I'm not a coffee drinker, so Starbucks has never held any appeal for me.

Their tea is awful. You pay a couple of quid for a teabag! If a coffee buys you freshly ground beans why not fresh tea leaves?

Their hot chocolates aren't much better.

A_fiend_for_life

fc123 wrote: »

It's too late to find it on google but I read it in 'Eat your Heart Out' by Felicity Lawrence.


Hidden sugar is in everything (if it's not labelled as sugar, it will be fructose, glucose and some other 'oses' that I can't recall from memory...there is an 'ose' derived from corn startch that is in everything and keeps the USA economy ticking over).

Excellent book she's got a follow up out now too: Eat your heart out.

Glucose-fructose syrup I think it is. It is discussed in the first chapter of eat your heart out. Very interesting chapter on processed breakfast 'cereals'. There's a good chapter on coffee in there too.


There's some more articles on the Guardian website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/felicitylawrence


Just reading another book at the moment 'The undercover economist' by Tim Harford that cover some of the trickery of the coffee industry.

A_fiend_for_life

Cleaver wrote: »

They charge up to £4 for a cup of coffee and only make £19,000 per annum profit?

I'm not doubting what you heard, but how is that possible?

I'm not an economist nor in business but given that some of the stores / franchises run at a loss they push other businesses out by keeping a large footprint as well as pushing up rents.

If local economies are to be sustainable there should be a proviso similar to supermarket limits imposed / suggested by the competition commissions report on supermarkets opening new stores within a certain distance of each other, the same should hold true for other chains.

When these chains retract it goes to show how much of a vacuum they leave behind along with the profits that have been hoovered out of local economies during the boom years.

Both local people and councils lose out on this come the bubble bursting. So it would seem sustainable planning would benefit all.

We seem to have a strange relationship with these people that don't stick around.

Sorry gone off topic a bit. Does this sound like a rant? It's not supposed to.

sinderella_2

doesn't sound at all like a rant - I think your comments on competiveness and sustainabilty are sound.

Subman_2

Its my understandig that all subway fillings are made in China and shipped over. Including the little portions of cooked "steak" in the gravy in the trays. I was told this by one of the staff who worked at a subway just outside cancun ( albeit it was a few years ago)

Nothing more than a vile rumour.

Virtually all the meat sold at Subway in the UK is processed in Ireland, with most coming from Irish animals also. As you mention the steak, to my knowledge the steak generally is made from animals from Ireland, Uraguay and more recently, Brazil. The pork in the breakfast sausages is British and in fact, very little of what we sell comes from anywhere other than the EU or USA.

I am not aware of any products in Subway that have their origins in China.

I've not heard anything about free range, fair trade, GM-Free, organic stuff etc

Indeed, that isn't the primary selling point. For the record though, the eggs used for the Breakfast Subs are 100% free range, while the coffee beans are now Rainforest Alliance Certified.

how will they employ 7,000 in 600 new outlets? Most of them are small franchises employing 3 to 5 people max. per store

I can tell you it would be virtually impossible to operate a Subway store with three staff! Most stores are open early to late, seven days a week, takes a lot more than three people! The average store probably employes about ten people, a mix of full and part time. The busiest stores may employ up to 40 people.

Subway are a franchise BUT there may be loads owned by one franchisee company...maybe.

The largest franchisee in the UK owns 40 stores I think. Most stores are owned by individuals with either one or two stores however. Even franchisees with four, five or more stores are still almost always local businesspeople. Running a Subway franchise is very hands on, there are no faceless corporations involved in the running of the stores.

Brighton Council closed the tourist office (in the heart of a tourist area) and then let it to a Subway.......changed the planning to A3?

A Subway store only requires A1 consent.

I think that Subway use paying high rents as a tactic to destroy competition.

Not true. Subway are very aggressive when it comes to negotiating rent and every single store I know of pays rent below market value. Rent can make or break a Subway store, and one will not open if the rent is too high.

The salad stuff they use is not healthy.

You can buy sandwiches from independent sandwich shops - I used to. They actually use fruit and veg they cut up themselves not stuff that comes in tubs and has been treated to keep it fresh longer.

Again, nonsense.

The veg in most Subway stores is delivered several times a week and is the exact same produce you'd find in the supermarket. Lettuce comes pre-shredded and olives, gherkins and jalapenoes also come in pre sliced, pickled and packed. Apart from that, the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and onions are all delivered fresh and are chopped up in store on a daily basis. The salads sold in Subway are most likely among the freshest of any sandwich shop on the high street.

Cleaver

Subman wrote: »

Nothing more than a vile rumour.

Virtually all the meat sold at Subway in the UK is processed in Ireland, with most coming from Irish animals also. As you mention the steak, to my knowledge the steak generally is made from animals from Ireland, Uraguay and more recently, Brazil. The pork in the breakfast sausages is British and in fact, very little of what we sell comes from anywhere other than the EU or USA.

I am not aware of any products in Subway that have their origins in China.



Indeed, that isn't the primary selling point. For the record though, the eggs used for the Breakfast Subs are 100% free range, while the coffee beans are now Rainforest Alliance Certified.



I can tell you it would be virtually impossible to operate a Subway store with three staff! Most stores are open early to late, seven days a week, takes a lot more than three people! The average store probably employes about ten people, a mix of full and part time. The busiest stores may employ up to 40 people.



The largest franchisee in the UK owns 40 stores I think. Most stores are owned by individuals with either one or two stores however. Even franchisees with four, five or more stores are still almost always local businesspeople. Running a Subway franchise is very hands on, there are no faceless corporations involved in the running of the stores.



A Subway store only requires A1 consent.



Not true. Subway are very aggressive when it comes to negotiating rent and every single store I know of pays rent below market value. Rent can make or break a Subway store, and one will not open if the rent is too high.



Again, nonsense.

The veg in most Subway stores is delivered several times a week and is the exact same produce you'd find in the supermarket. Lettuce comes pre-shredded and olives, gherkins and jalapenoes also come in pre sliced, pickled and packed. Apart from that, the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and onions are all delivered fresh and are chopped up in store on a daily basis. The salads sold in Subway are most likely among the freshest of any sandwich shop on the high street.

Quite a compelling argument. However, I still think Subway are the worst thing since the plague and I'll be avoiding them in the same way. And besides, I've heard that the tomatos are actually made out of maggots and that the staff are genetically grown from cells taken from the rejected Big Brother contestants.

The total, worldwide uniformity gives me the creeps.

And the place smells like rotting bins.