Small-Coffeehouse Owner Calls Out Starbucks
Photo by Karie Hamilton/USA Today
Small-coffeehouse owner Penny Stafford sued Starbucks in September, charging that the Mermaid illegally maintains its “predatory monopoly” by barring other coffeehouses from occupying prime downtown high-rises in Seattle and Bellevue through exclusive leases with property owners. Since the federal antitrust lawsuit was initiated, Stafford has been plagued by hostile and anonymous telephone calls and e-mails, warning her to drop the lawsuit and slamming her for daring to attack Starbucks. “It’s as if I had insulted apple pie and America,” says Stafford, owner of the Belvi Coffee and Tea Exchange in Bellevue, Wash.
From USA Today: “Owner of small coffee shop takes on java titan Starbucks.”
Starbucks also drove Stafford and other coffeehouses out of business by buying coffee sellers and flooding neighborhoods with new Starbucks stores that even cannibalized the sales of existing Starbucks shops, the lawsuit alleges. “This is wrong, period,” Stafford says. “I’m not willing to leave the specialty coffee business because of Starbucks shutting me or anyone else down.”
Starbucks spokeswoman Sanja Gould says, “Starbucks denies that we have done anything improper, and we intend to rightfully defend ourselves. As Starbucks has grown, so has the industry, all of which benefits coffee consumers and the competitors of Starbucks.”
If you’re new to the Starbucks’ controversy, USA Today boils it down for you:
Starbucks is widely admired by Wall Street and other businesses as a well-run corporation, a mighty marketing machine and, until recently, a highflying stock. …
Starbucks also has been praised for its social and environmental acts, from donating millions of dollars to charities, to promoting “fair trade” export practices with Third World coffee bean producers.1
But Stafford’s lawsuit symbolizes the distaste that critics have toward Starbucks. Few retail chains have been the target of such a long-brewing backlash from neighborhood activists, anti-globalization protesters, labor organizers and some consumers and small-business owners. Starbucks has been accused of being a corporate bully whose tactics hurt small businesses, erode the character of local communities and exploit the coffee bean economies of Third World countries.
Starbucks’ vast size and “aggressive real estate grabs” clearly alienate some people, says Bryant Simon, a Temple University historian and author of Consuming Starbucks, to be published in 2008.
“By being everywhere, they create markets,” Simon says. “But they also narrow the markets and limit opportunities for companies.”
The $11 billion U.S. market for specialty coffee keeps growing, with about 23,000 coffeehouses, reports the Specialty Coffee Association of America trade group. Spokesman Mike Ferguson says sales won’t peak “until there’s an espresso bar in every neighborhood.”
(Emphases are mine.)
Shop organic, fair-trade, and indie. To locate an independent coffeehouse near you, check out Delocator. (Also works for bookstores and movie theaters.) If you live in New York City or Jersey City, I have a not-yet-comprehensive list of shops here.
1HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…
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4. Fast Food Planet
5. Wake Up and Smell the Fair-Trade Coffee
Crafty green Poet said,
December 22, 2006 at 10:53 am
I have never drunk coffee in Starbucks and never will. We’re lucky in Edinburgh in having a lot of independent coffee shops, cafes etc.