The “Evolution” of Starbucks
Honestly haven’t seen that title used yet and am surprised, thought it kind of wrote itself.
Anyway, been getting tons of email on this so I thought easiest way to address it was in a post. Here is the news, I’ll use Herb Greenberg’s post on it since IMO he does a nice job:
Its announced acquisition of miniscule Evolution Fresh as the launching pad for a health and wellness brand is not just a natural progression for Starbucks—but downright genius (and, in retrospect, so obvious.)
The success of the new venture, and its growth possibilities, is Starbucks’ (SBUX, Financial) to screw up.
But based on history, it won’t.
With any business or investment there is a leap of faith based, in large part, on the ability of management to execute. A hallmark of Starbucks, as a business, is execution. And one thing CEO Howard Schultz has proven is that he can execute.
He executed against an original model of opening up stores against one another that looked like a model destined to destroying itself. (I was an early critic.)
He executed on a turnaround orchestrated by Schultz after the company appeared to lose its way. (Having learned from my past mistakes, I was not a critic.)
And he is likely to execute on this new venture, as well. As he told Maria Bartiromo on air Thursday—Starbucks reinvented a generic business like coffee, so why not do the same with juice?
Honestly haven’t seen that title used yet and am surprised, thought it kind of wrote itself.
Anyway, been getting tons of email on this so I thought easiest way to address it was in a post. Here is the news, I’ll use Herb Greenberg’s post on it since IMO he does a nice job:
Its announced acquisition of miniscule Evolution Fresh as the launching pad for a health and wellness brand is not just a natural progression for Starbucks—but downright genius (and, in retrospect, so obvious.)
The success of the new venture, and its growth possibilities, is Starbucks’ (SBUX, Financial) to screw up.
But based on history, it won’t.
With any business or investment there is a leap of faith based, in large part, on the ability of management to execute. A hallmark of Starbucks, as a business, is execution. And one thing CEO Howard Schultz has proven is that he can execute.
He executed against an original model of opening up stores against one another that looked like a model destined to destroying itself. (I was an early critic.)
He executed on a turnaround orchestrated by Schultz after the company appeared to lose its way. (Having learned from my past mistakes, I was not a critic.)
And he is likely to execute on this new venture, as well. As he told Maria Bartiromo on air Thursday—Starbucks reinvented a generic business like coffee, so why not do the same with juice?
