Condé Nast PORTFOLIO on STARBUCKS' CEO Howard Schultz !!

If UTEP's STARBUCKS have already folded, where was Frances Nuera, when we needed her??!!

Adapted from the article, "Tall Order," by David Margolick and photographer Art Streiber, the July 2008 edition of Condé Nast Portfolio: Business Intelligence...

"Starbucks' chief caffeinista faces penny - pinching customers, a plunging stock price, and competition from Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's.

"Can Howard Schultz keep his company from getting creamed?"

Project Ferrari is what it's called...

"Project Ferrari is what it's called around the Starbucks Center in Seattle.

"For the past several months, behind locked doors on the sealed - off seventh floor of corporate headquarters, they've worked on it.

"Few people have ever seen the the stuff, and almost no one has tasted it.

"And suddenly here it is, swirls of yellow, red, white, and purple in parfait cups, bathing in grapefruit or blueberry juice, or espresso.

"Two of Howard Schultz's partners -- that's what Starbucks calls its roughly 200,000 employees -- approach the door to his office, carrying the cups on silver trays.

"Schultz shouts at them cheerfully, Come on in!"

Looking back to where it all began: the coffee...


"Starbucks, Schultz says, will look forward by looking back to where it all began: the coffee.

"The company's Great Satan is the poor breakfast sandwich, which, while it earns handsome profits, embodies Starbucks' deviation from its core business, besides stinking up the joint and obliterating the heavenly aroma of freshly ground beans.

"Schulz has ordered it banished.

"Another distraction was Starbucks' music business, the one that plants all those CDs en route to the cash register.

"With breathtaking speed and even a bit of masochism, Schultz scuttled most of the division in May.

One victim of the music purge ...

"One victim of the music purge says Howard [Schultz] is just focused entirely on getting the business back on track, and he will do anything or eliminate anyone to help him do that...

"One Starbucks executive tells me. He wants to go back to the point where everyone was happy and everyone loved us and then make a left turn instead of a right...

"Starbucks is closing 100 underperforming stores and cutting way back -- at least by its own expotential standards -- on expansion in the U.S.A..."