The Starbucks Wrecking Ball!

The Starbucks Wrecking Ball! www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
The Starbucks recon ball. Recon ball, I'm thinking of that
Miley Cyrus song. There came in like a recon ball. Well,
that's what happened to Starbucks. This is what happens when
you bring in management consultants. This is what happens when
you hire some schmuck from McKinsey to run your company.

(00:41):
I gotta be honestly, I used to. I mean, I'm
going back years ago. This is going back nineteen ninety.
I enjoyed Starbucks. I did. I like coffee. I love
cafes when I lived in New York City. I mean
like going down to little Italy and still do. And

(01:03):
it's sitting at it. Well now I like a hell
of a lot better because Starbucks sucks. Sorry, it does.
The original concept behind Starbucks was to have a bit
of a bring cafe culture to the United States, make
it kind of like how Italy does it. And again,

(01:26):
one of my favorite things to do. Favorite things to
do is to go and just chill in a cafe
in Italy and relax, you know, with they don't have
at the cafes in Italy, they don't have half calf
double dcaf lattes with you know, sugar and with crab.

(01:48):
It's no. They make coffee really, really well. And again
that was something that Starbucks used to take pride in.
Now it cafe culture. No, you walk in there, you
got a freaking line going out the door for the

(02:08):
people who ordered on the app. You know, no one
is relaxed. Someone's sitting down. It's hustling, bustle. I don't
want to go there. I don't want to hang out there.
I don't want to be in there. You think you
think that they're doing that at those cafes that are
sitting in Piazza Vecchio and Florence that have been there
for you know, a couple hundred years, people coming there

(02:30):
and ordering on an app. No. No, I watched a
video because Starbucks said the new CEO, Brian Nickel, put
out a video and basically he's like, we're hitting a
reset button. We're going back, We're going back to the

(02:51):
way we used to be we're going to give us
back that retro Starbucks feel. And yeah, you gotta get
rid of a lot of the bs. I honestly, I again,
I partended in an Italian restaurant that was busy, and
I was to handle the cocktails and the people at

(03:13):
the bar, but I also had to do coffee too.
I learned a lot of tricks about making coffee and
quickly and how you know again, But when I did it,
there wasn't any of this funky nonsense that was going on.
If you try ordering one of your ridiculous coffees in Italy,
the bartenders you know, I'm not gonna swear here in
the time, they're gonna tell you to go take a hike.

(03:36):
They're not gonna do that. That's not what they do.
They're gonna look, I mean, they're gonna look at you
like you're crazy. I can say, no, we're not going
to do that again. It ruins the experience for everybody else.
So you've kind of be all things to all people,
make all of these ridiculous, high caloric drinks which are nonsensical,

(03:58):
and you wrecked your brain. And because some McKinsey type
told you it was a great idea. No, no, again.
You had a bloody winning formula for crying out loud
and you had to listen. You had to listen to
these Ivy League types that think that they know better,
and look what happened. So again, his message right now

(04:25):
is back to Starbucks, back to Starbucks, going back to
the way it used to be good idea watchdog on
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