It appears to me that SBUX has lost sight of the premise (at least in my opinion) that what they're selling is an experience, and people pay for the experience by buying a coffee. As with any other franchise or franchise-like operation, the "secret sauce" is to make the experience bland enough for it to appeal to a large segment of the population, and consistent enough that people will have their expectations met regardless of which location you visit.<p>I seem to recall that their CEO wrote a scathing internal memo a while back about where the company has gone, but as a publicly traded entity they've become conditioned to see profit as their only goal.<p>BTW, I'm a semi-fan, at least to the extent that I needed to hang out somewhere for a while today, and the first place that came to mind was SBUX (I wanted wifi, and coffee was welcome too).