24/7 Wall St.

Peter Lynch, who had one of the great investment track records while at Fidelity once made this point:  "An amateur investor can pick tomorrow’s big winners by paying attention to new developments at the workplace, the mall, the auto showrooms, the restaurants, or anywhere a promising new enterprise makes its debut."

And  Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks (SBUX), recently wrote to his management: "Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand." 

24/7 Wall St. is setting out to test the Lynch investment approach, and to find out if Mr. Schultz does have a problem Our writers will visit at least one Starbucks a day at 7.30 AM to 8.30 AM local time. We will look at stores in over a dozen cities. Each outlet will be graded on the time it takes from getting in line until the order is delivered, cleanliness of the store, cleanliness of the bathroom, whether the store has adequate seating, the friendliness and professionalism of personnel, whether their is adequate inventory, and overall ambiance. Each of these will be grade 1 though 3, with 3 being the best score.

Today we have a "bonus" store, one we looked at over the weekend. It is the sole location in East Hampton NY at 39 Main Street. Visit was on Saturday at 11 AM. This area is filled with wealthy residents. The store is fairly small, but the patrons are not the kind who would want to wait.

Wait time: 2 minutes, 10 seconds. (Overall ratings. 3 being best) Wait time–3. Cleanliness–3. Bathrooms–3. Personnel–3. Inventory–3. Ambience–3. Probably the best Starbucks we have visited.

Douglas A. McIntyre