Legal Commentary

The news at Starbucks is grim and lean (unlike the drinks).  Among the "action steps" on the "transformation agenda" of Starbucks bigwig Howard Schultz (must they talk that way?) is the closure of "approximately 100 underperforming stores."  Of course, one supposes they might ultimately end up closing even more stores than that.

If they're going to start talking about store closures, I think Starbucks ought to tread carefully.  It's all well and good for those of you who teach, study or work around the Upper West Side, or around Dupont Circle in DC, where you can be sure that a randomly-thrown rock will hit at least a couple displays of cut-rate mugs and Sheryl Crow album tie-ins and bounce off the laptops of two or three would-be screenwriters.  But those of us in the hinterland depend on our few stores as a caffeinated connection to the standardized bourgeois culture and comforts found everywhere else in the nation.  We need our Starbucks.  I would hate to think the store would be rash in how it goes about closing its locations. 

Really, I think the whole thing is serious enough that it's no good just allowing the free market to muck around with sales figures and so on.  At the same time, I hardly trust the political process either in this case, especially with an election coming up.  Happily, we already have a wonderful model in place for a solution: why not a federal Starbucks Realignment and Closure Commission?