Thursday, August 06, 2009

Expresso Incognito

Stealth Starbucks: Seattle-based coffee giant opening neighborhood shops in disguise

"In the continued flailings of the Starbucks chain, here's a new one: the stealth Starbucks store.A Seattle outlet of the 16,000-store coffee behemoth is being rebranded without visible Starbucks identifiers, as 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.Two other stores in Starbucks' native Seattle will follow suit, each getting its own name to make it sound more like a neighborhood hangout, less like Big Coffee, a Starbucks official told The Seattle Times on Thursday."

"They must be conceding something. They must be feeling they can't compete on a neighborhood level," said Tony Dreyfuss, an owner of Metropolis Coffee Company, in the Edgewater neighborhood. "It does feel a little bit sneaky to me. But our quality is better than theirs, I feel, and our customers know us."

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