I don't drink coffee, myself. The vaunted "coffee generation" skipped over me. Largely because coffee tastes to me like unmalted battery acid, even though it smells wonderful when I walk down that aisle at the supermarket. Sure, I know, that's what the cream and sugar are for, but I tend to subscribe to that old crack, "Do you want some coffee with your cream and sugar?" It saves both time and effort to just get a milkshake instead. Which is what I usually do.
Yes, I know, you can get cold drinks at Starbucks, but they all have coffee in them, which is approaching the same problem from the opposite direction. There's also the problem of Starbucks being exorbitantly expensive, and the additional fact that I don't care for muffins or any other of their foodstuff offerings, and not just because I lack any need for outside regularity assistance.
And all of the above doesn't include the fact that Starbucks CEO and former Seattle SuperSonics owner Howard Schultz was complicit in the NBA's theft of our NBA franchise and its relocation to Oklahoma City. Even if I was as big a caffeine addict as my daughter, I would have boycotted Starbucks forever after that outrage.
So Schultz's "race together" fiasco was like shutting the barn door after the horse was glue.
But he's not only not letting go of this PR boner, he's doubling down for bad measure:
Starbucks showed its commitment to its controversial Race Together campaign with a strong move Tuesday. CEO Howard Schultz announced the company is opening a store in Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson has become the focal point for amplified discussions about U.S. race relations in the past year after Michael Brown was shot and killed [while attempting to shoot and kill] Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson last summer.
Schultz spoke about the Ferguson store on stage at a NationSwell event Tuesday, according to Fortune. Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) did not release a timeline for the store, but a representative said it would be part of the three hundred stores the company plans to open this year.
The move to open a Ferguson store is part of Starbucks’ push to open stores in more diverse communities in the U.S., Starbucks spokeswoman Alisha Damodaran said Wednesday.
The population of Ferguson is nearly 70% black. Starbucks are most common in areas that are about 75% white, according to data from Quartz.
Which suggests one of two things - no, three: (1) white people drink a lot more coffee than black people do; (2) white people can afford overpriced battery acid a lot more than black people can; or (3) Howard Schultz is a racist and is trying to atone for it by opening a store in Ferguson for the Black Klan to burn to the ground. Heck, maybe he sees it as a tax write-off.
The interesting question will be the degree to which the gentrification factor can play out. Will the lure of acid reflux and poop aids be enough for white customers to overcome the still-high likelihood of getting their skulls caved in with hammers? If it does, will the white influx into Ferguson crowding out the indigenous black majority population be more or less likely to further stoke black resentment? And will Starbucks significantly lower their prices to make their product affordable to that black majority population?
What could possibly go wrong?
I'm sure y'all can fill in that plethora of blanks, seeing as how the caffeine overdoses will preclude your sleeping anyway.
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