Starbucks©

A rare treat for SPIIDERWEB™ readers, I'm going to give you the advantage of my business acumen.

The board of directors at Starbucks© may not be weasels (my last post?).

Any CEO who didn't go to the board and suggest closing U.S. stores that weren't performing well, introducing new products and store designs, and improving training for baristas as well as taking some of the capital originally intended for U.S. store growth and use it to accelerate international expansion where profits are better deserves to get sacked.

At the very least it would be the board's decision to forgo such plans and he'd have covered his ass. So that speaks to his intelligence and corporate sense.

As for saturating certain markets, as some analysts suspect, I believe McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, not to mention 7-11, have pretty much proved that's fairly hard to do. Some of their stores are no more than a five minutes walk apart. And lopping off the poorest performing stores would definitely correct that problem.

The legal department, comptroller, those are difficult areas. Day to day planning, strategy, tactics isn't that difficult with a decent staff. They do the analysis, crunch the numbers and most decisions are common sense.

Any comments to expand on this or critique it are very welcome. Hey, I didn't get straight A's in Business Administration, but I did in Psychology. Ya need help?