(book review) Starbucked

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture by Taylor Clark
(Little, Brown and Company, NY-USA, 2007)

For all you coffee lovers out there and the rest of you, Taylor Clark has written this fun piece of Starbuck's birth, its growth and its journey that will educate and humour you at the same time.

The first part of the book talks about how Starbucks changed economics of the coffee industry. It talks about the history of coffee and the culture surrounding it. The second part contains discussion around the controversies surrounding Starbucks. The criticism points how Starbucks has homogenized the planet, destroyed cultural diversity within its stores, killed the local coffee houses and how they have underpaid the farmers. This author has managed to maintain a good balance of the positive and negative aspects of the company. Overall, its a great research and analysis on the impact that Starbucks has on all our lives.

With my background, I enjoyed reading how they developed their brand, the history of the Mermaid logo and how it evolved. I liked to learn about their approach to retail design and the impact it has on the customers. Clark's research and his journalistic style of writing appealed to me. I encountered this same (journalistic) style of writing with Sarah Lacy's book (review below) and seem to enjoy it.

Even though I found it hard to separate Howard Schultz from Starbucks throughout the book, I still have an appetite for more. The next book I want to read now is Onward: How Starbucks Fought for its Life without losing its Soul by Howard Schultz.