I hope David Bach is happy. He finally got his way. David's constant pounding to the masses that the best way to save money and become a millionaire was to give up the
'latte factor'. You know the scenario: stop buying those $5 frappuccino's from
Starbucks, invest the five bucks instead and become
The Automatic Millionaire.
David Bach changed what he considered to be the 'latte factor' over the years. He was concerned about probable lawsuits. But we all knew who he was targeting. It was Starbucks. Today Starbucks announced that they are
closing 600 stores in the US and laying off over 12,000 employees of it's 172,000 total employed people. Twelve thousand people are now out of a job because some financial guru concocted a scheme to create millionaires by just simply giving up a five dollar cup of coffee. As if?
I wonder how many millionaires are really out there because they stopped drinking their $5 cup of joe? Are any of those 12,ooo unemployed people millionaires? How about the remaining 160,000? Are they millionaires yet? If they own Starbucks stocks, they're not.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz knew his company was on the downswing. Foreclosures and a tightening economy made many wallets tighter across the nation. Schultz's preposterous solution was to come out with another flavor of coffee, Pike Place. No, Mr. Schultz. Lower the price of a cup of coffee to $1.50 and watch the big bucks roll in. It's far better to make a little money than no money at all. Even
Frugal Me would have stopped in a Starbucks and imbibed in a buck-fifty-soy-venti-place-of-pike. (Did I get the java lingo correct?)
Starbucks tried to reinvent the coffee wheel by using pseudo-Italian names for the sizes of their designer cups (tall, grande, venti vs small, medium, large). Fail to order your cup of coffee using these ridiculous brain-twisting names and you would be ignored by both the barista and the cashier. Starbucks justified their prices by presenting a 'whole experience'. Indulge in a grande cafe' au lait with a double shot, linger as long as you wanted amongst the Starbucks' ambiance, surf the web, listen to funky music, chat with your hip friends, be part of the in-crowd. It was all a plot. All a scheme. To make a consumer think that an actual few pennies of coffee could be anything more than what it is: "A cup of coffee. Small. With milk and sugar. Please. To go."
And so it goes.
