Oddly, I'm writing this at a local Starbuck's Coffee. While Linda and I will occasionally pop into one when traveling and no other option presents itself, we have never been regular Starbuck's customers. In Green Bay, Kavarna came first. Today I'm here because it's a little more comfortable than my car dealership's waiting room and it happens to be several hundred feet down the road.

Starbuck's has recently generated a lot of publicity for itself by attempting to regain the quality and sense of place that it once had (though if there was ever a 'Golden Age' of Starbuck's, I think I missed it). First, there was founder Howard Schultz's memo about how Starbuck's has lost its way, and then the three hour nationwide closure for retraining. It definitely seems like these are part of a marketing strategy to try to convince people that they are more than just the McDonald's of coffee. If anyone at Starbuck's upper management happens to be subscribed to this eNewsetter, I've compiled a list of what I believe that Starbuck's can learn from Kavarna:

• Use Lighter Roasts. The cup of coffee that I am drinking right now isn't terrible. But, what I am tasting are mostly the artifacts of roasting, and not the coffee itself. It's overdone, some might call it slightly burnt tasting. Starbucks' strategy appears to be to use overly-dark roasts to produce a strong flavor that covers up deficiencies in its coffee.
• Use Ceramic Mugs. Sure, it's a pain to wash dishes, but it's just not possible to curl up with a cardboard cup the way you can with a nice, thick diner mug.
• Use Loose Leaf Teas. The best quality tea is reserved to be sold loose leaf. Tea bags are generally filled with lower quality teas.
• Free Wi-Fi. I can't believe they continue to charge for this, wi-fi should be like air.
• Give Your Store Managers More Autonomy. Starbuck's is full of little touches that seem homey until you see that the location across town has the same little touches. If you gave your managers more autonomy, you could actually, you know, have homey little touches that were meaningful.

I could continue, but it's this last point that's most striking to me. Starbuck's is full of marketing materials that are designed to look like corkboards, fliers, and other trappings of actual, community-based coffeehouses. It's a shame that they do not have sufficient trust in their 'partners' to do more than simulate community.

Being in the coffee industry, it's hard not to think about Starbuck's frequently. But happily, they're not really in the same business that we are.