<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>The first casualty of the current economic slowdown may be the American bourgeoisie. From Williamsburg to the Mall of America, these are the middle-class, educated Americans who have been spending $4 on a cup of coffee and $200 on a pair of jeans. Not for them is the conspicuous indulgence of a foreign sports car, but that high-end chef's stove can be seen as a necessity. Foods like sushi, once exotic and urban, are so mainstream that even the Sopranos became sushi snobs. Examined in books like Bobos in Paradise (2000) and Trading Up: The New American Luxury (2003), these consumers are now sounding a retreat. U.S. shoppers are paring their spending amid lower home prices, high energy costs, and tightening credit. Coach, known for its handbags, has become the latest maker of American luxury goods to sound a warning that Americans are no longer spending on "affordable luxuries." And Starbucks has begun experimenting with a cheaper and smaller cup of coffee, according to The Wall Street Journal. "You had a lot of people who graduated to a level of consumption they could not really afford," Adrianne Shapira, a retail analyst with Goldman Sachs told the New York Times. "Two-hundred-dollar pairs of denim were plausible when home values soared, but now $100 jeans are looking more reasonable." Coach said today that sales at its stores in North America open at least a year fell 1.1 percent in the holiday-season fourth quarter, compared with a gain of 20.8 percent in the quarter a year earlier. "My own view is that we're already in a consumer recession," Lew Frankfort, Coach's chief executive officer, told Reuters. Like Tiffany & Co., which also reported a decline in U.S. sales, Coach was buoyed by overseas gains. Overall, Coach sales rose 21 percent and the company reported an 11 percent increase in fourth-quarter earnings. Certainly an affordable luxury can still be found for a few dollars a day at Starbucks? But the seemingly omnipresent coffee chain is also seeing traffic at its U.S. stores fall. In response, Starbucks is experimenting with a short (eight-ounce) cup of coffee selling for $1 in its Seattle-area stores. It is also trying out free refills for brewed coffee. Sarah Gilbert on BloggingStocks hails the move as "a new entry point for the cash-poor masses." Brewed coffee, she notes, often gets thrown away if it's not fresh. "Free refills could end up not increasing the company's costs at all, and do great things for customer goodwill," she says. But doesn't that sound like something a diner would do? And if it is all about the price, then why not pay a few cents more for a bigger cup at Dunkin Donuts or McDonald's? Starbucks has always been more about the experience than the price: the dormlike couches, the Nick Drake CD playing in the background, and the interaction with the baristas. If that changes, then the bobo truly is an endangered species. Can it get any worse for affluent Americans? Yes, if they eat sushi. The New York Times is reporting that laboratory tests of tuna sushi taken from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants found mercury levels so high at most of them that they would exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable.</div> Source: Yahoo Finance
lol, Did you write this, shape? It seems to prove a point that you've been harping on for as long as I can remember.
Good thing I'm not an expensive clothes, snobby food eating type of American. I'll be able to continue living like there was no recession at all.
As a former Starbucks employee (in a training film for the company, no less) it never fails to bother me that reports always refer to a '$4 cup of coffee.' The COFFEE isn't $4; the espresso-based drinks are. I understand making a point, but some accuracy! A Venti coffee will run about $2 for its 20 ounces - not that far removed from comparable places. That's also part of why free refills won't have the effect predicted. People will still associate Starbucks with $4 'coffee' just as much as they do now.
It's not the coffee!!! Where's the cursing smiley? Ah there is is: I remember reading the billboards going into South of the Border, between North and South Carolina, where they put the price of a gallon of milk next to that of gas, and made the same point.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (AEM)</div><div class='quotemain'>As a former Starbucks employee (in a training film for the company, no less) it never fails to bother me that reports always refer to a '$4 cup of coffee.' The COFFEE isn't $4; the espresso-based drinks are. I understand making a point, but some accuracy! A Venti coffee will run about $2 for its 20 ounces - not that far removed from comparable places. That's also part of why free refills won't have the effect predicted. People will still associate Starbucks with $4 'coffee' just as much as they do now.</div> I pay $3.34 w/ tax for a tall mocha. Its fun to give them a $10 bill and see if they'll tell me how much change it is. They rarely do. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane)</div><div class='quotemain'>The other "joke" about starbucks is their coffee is more expensive than gasoline.</div> If you figure it out as dollars per gallon; I believe the coffee is more expensive then gas.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (AEM @ Jan 29 2008, 05:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>As a former Starbucks employee (in a training film for the company, no less) it never fails to bother me that reports always refer to a '$4 cup of coffee.' The COFFEE isn't $4; the espresso-based drinks are. I understand making a point, but some accuracy! A Venti coffee will run about $2 for its 20 ounces - not that far removed from comparable places. That's also part of why free refills won't have the effect predicted. People will still associate Starbucks with $4 'coffee' just as much as they do now.</div> Yeah I read the free refills won't effect the bottom line because Starbucks throws out a lot of un-used coffee on a daily basis. Haha Chutney I didn't write the article, but I got a good laugh out of it.
Who in the hell spends a 100 dollars on a pair of jeans, let alone 200 dollars? Neither or those should be in the affordable luxury category.
^ there was just an article about some lottery winner in NY who went out to buy his woman (not sure of their exact status) some designer jeans straightaway. It was sometime over the last week in the NY Post... If I'm spending $100 on jeans, I expect them to play Zelda or something.
