Last week, I argued with someone who said companies really only had opportunities to differentiate on service when they’d screwed something up – ‘problem recovery’.  Not true, I said. Then, @Bread_Winners went on to make my case.  Last week, I tweeted that I had seen a wine on the wall at Bread Winners while brunching [...]

I’m a reluctant Starbucks user. I have always liked their coffee. But, somewhere about the time their business was hitting a tough spot, I had taken a sabbatical of six months or more. I guess all those messages about a Starbucks a day being roughly equivalent to the cost of your children’s college education finally [...]

There must be over 18,000 different ways to order a beverage at Starbucks. This has helped Starbucks turn coffee, a commodity, into a brand so well embraced that their shops have become destinations for millions of consumers. Coffee is available on nearly every corner, yet people pass by dozens of other shops on their way [...]