Commentary
I am one of those who doesn’t love Starbucks. I patronized them only when something I liked better, usually local, wasn’t available. Still, they were and maybe still are, an American, and an international, phenomenon.
Founder and CEO Howard Schultz figured out how to take the Greenwich Village coffeehouse of yore, clean it up, and leave just enough bohemian edge to make customers feel as if they were doing something cool by patronizing it. It worked, spectacularly.
I was so impressed by the CEO’s acumen, and his seemingly sane middle-of-the-road political approach, rare to disappearing in Democrats, I even wrote somewhat favorably in January 2019 of his presidential trial balloon in “Howard Schultz Could Actually Win the Presidency.”…