Starbucks (SBUX): Another Quick Fix That Is No Fix

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 5:28AM EDT · Published Jun 17, 4:52AM EDT

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The latest mad plan by Howard Schulz and his executive team to fix Starbucks (SBUX) is to have stores grind beans each time they make a new pot of coffee. Apparently, the beans are only ground in the morning now.

According to The Wall Street Journal, current brewing methods mean “customers can be forced to wait, choose another type of coffee or leave the store empty handed.”

The current generation of managers running Starbucks, with the founder as CEO, has just figured out, after two years running the company, that its stores do not brew enough fresh coffee. That is an extraordinary revelation and says a great deal about why Starbucks has faltered. It is a company which was founded on good coffee but built on flashy stores and overpriced beverages and food. Now Starbucks wants to get back to its roots by eliminating the chances that its coffee may not be fresh.

As time passes, and students at business schools break apart and analyze what went wrong at Starbucks, they will probably all come to the same conclusion. Starbucks was a great place to buy and drink coffee. When it tried to be more than that its reputations started to suffer.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.