Julius Briner

[thomas1234]

The Executive Director of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), Nestor Osorio, urged coffee producers to focus attention on increasing yields by “promoting renovation of existing coffee plantations.”

He was speaking at the inauguration of the three-day India International Coffee Festival (IICF) here on Wednesday.

Speaking to The Hindu, Dr. Osorio said international coffee prices were likely to remain firm in the next coffee year (October-September) because demand and supply were “evenly balanced.” “The average price is now in tune with market fundamentals,” he remarked.

Dr. Osorio said coffee growers across the world had been adversely affected by the spike in fertilizer prices and the sharp devaluation of the U.S. dollar vis-a-vis the currencies of producer countries. “The price recovery has been nullified by the dollar’s slide,” he said.

Global output
The ICO estimates that international coffee output in the 2008-09 season to be about 128-130 million bags (of 60 kg each), roughly equal to the demand amounting to 130 million bags. Dr. Osorio said the only inventory of coffee was the stocks of about 25 million bags in the hands of the consuming segment at ports. Chairman of the Coffee Board G. V. Krishna Rau said that although India’s share in exports was only four per cent, the diversity and quality of Indian supplies “offer a relative advantage and unique opportunity to growers.” Indian output of coffee in the 2009-10 season is likely to touch 3 lakh tonnes, from 2.62 lakh tonnes in the previous year.

Mr. Rau said there was an “urgent need” to develop coping strategies to deal with the impact of climate change. Heavy and unseasonal rains, coupled with uncertain weather, have caused significant crop damage to the coffee crop in successive years since 2006, he pointed out. V.G. Siddhartha, Chairman, ABC Trading, urged the industry to invest in coffee processing technology so that productivity could be increased. The festival was inaugurated by S. V. Ranganath, Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka.

[thomas1234]

Dunkin' Donuts -- "number one coffee and baked goods brand worldwide" -- loses second top executive in a year

Its president and chief brand officer, William Kussell, will leave at the end of the year. There are no plans to replace him, and Dunkin's CEO of 10 months, Nigel Travis, will assume the title of president.

In the 15 years Kussell worked at Dunkin', it grew from a chain of 3,000 stores to what Travis calls "the number one coffee and baked goods brand worldwide with more than 8,800 stores in 31 countries," Advertising Age reported.

Starbucks has almost twice as many stores, so where does the "number one" part come from? Adding "baked goods" to the description? A customer satisfaction survey?

As Advertising Age points out, "The chain [corporate sibling to Baskin-Robbins and Togo's sandwich chain] is embroiled in a hot coffee war with McDonald's and Starbucks, and recently revived the comparative 'Dunkin' Beat Starbucks' campaign first launched last October."

Starbucks has fought back with its first national brand campaign, and this week's Via ads accompanying the rollout of its instant coffee (which, incidentally, the Wall Street Journal reports, was once called "a product of last resort" by Starbucks' former head of research and development.)

[thomas1234]

Starbucks kills communities, academic claims

Starbucks and its latte-frothing emulators have helped to kill off community life, according to an academic who conducted a study of the world’s biggest coffee chain.

Small and widely spaced tables, free wireless internet access and a preference for take-away customers are among the conversation-killing factors that have encouraged patrons to cut themselves off, Bryant Simon claimed.

The seemingly ubiquitous Starbucks, which has 16,000 outlets worldwide and last year earned nearly $10.4 billion (£6.5 billion), had made great play of how it encourages people to come together, he said.

Many branches had community message boards and – borrowing from sociology – the company marketed itself as a “third place” between work and home. But Prof Simon, an academic at Temple University in Philadelphia, said the communal feel was an “illusion”.

“People immediately create their own little private, gated communities. You come in, set up your laptop and put on your headphones,” he said yesterday. “You couldn’t be more alone in public if you wanted to be.”

Prof Simon visited 425 Starbucks branches in nine countries, including Britain, over a year and talked to customers. He said he witnessed few spontaneous discussions or interactions. He said the rise of Starbucks and its rivals was a far cry from the British coffee houses of the 18th and 19th centuries “which were the cornerstone of democracy with a small 'd’”.

In his book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks, Prof Simon also pointed out that the company’s sense of community was very narrow.

It ensured its prices were high — a latte can cost £3 — and opened only in upmarket areas in order to maintain an aura of exclusivity, he said.

Prof Simon concluded that Starbucks’s success had little to do with the coffee and everything to do with image and identity. “Time and again customers told me they would look at someone carrying a Starbucks cup and assume they were successful and moderately hip,” he said.

A spokesman for Starbucks said it welcomed all customer feedback.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 7:25PM BST 28 Sep 2009

[thomas1234]

Starbucks is launching a store-finding and menu-information application for the iPhone, and is testing a second app that will let customers use the phone as their Starbucks card.

Starbucks is testing an app that lets customers use their iPhone as their Starbucks card. The two apps are the coffee chain’s first for the iPhone and iPod touch. It has previously offered mobile services, such as the ability to send a text message to locate a nearby store, and has worked with Apple to make in-store songs available through iTunes.

The apps resulted from customer feedback it received via social-networking sites and My Starbucks Idea, the online community it launched last year, said Stephen Gillett, its chief information officer. “We think it’s really talking to our customers in new ways.”

Starbucks will be competing with several unofficial iPhone apps, such as iApp’s Find a Starbucks Coffee, Snow Storm’s Expresso Pro and ourLivez’s Sbux Card, and tech blogs have pitched concepts of what a Starbucks iPhone app might look like for a while now.


The drink builder feature on myStarbucks, a new iPhone app The first app, myStarbucks, lets customers locate stores and bookmark favorite locations. They can search by additional information, such as hours and amenities, to find, for example, a nearby one that’s open and has a drive-thru window. It also includes a menu and nutritional information for Starbucks’s drinks, food and coffee beans, and a “drink builder” that displays nutritional information based on the selections.

The second app lets users check their card balance and transfer more money to it. In 16 stores in Seattle and the Bay Area — due to the high usage rates of both Starbucks cards and Apple products in those regions, a Starbucks spokeswoman said — it also displays a scannable bar code on the cellphone screen, allowing it to be used to pay for purchases, like a Starbucks card, at those stores.

Starbucks will gauge customer feedback during the trial and then decide whether to extend the card functionality to other markets, Mr. Gillett said. Both apps are free and don’t contain ads, and there are no plans to charge for them, he added.

[thomas1234]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New U.S. home sales posted a tepid 0.7 percent increase last month, missing Wall Street expectations and providing more evidence that the housing market recovery remains tentative.

The Commerce Department said Friday sales inched up to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 429,000 from a downwardly revised 426,000 in July. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a pace of 440,000.

While it was the fifth straight increase and the strongest report in 11 months, sales were 4.3 percent lower than the same month last year. Sales have risen 30 percent from the bottom in January, but are off about 70 percent from the peak of four years ago.

The report was the second straight disappointing sign for the U.S. housing market, which is struggling to emerge from the most severe bust in generations. On Thursday, the National Association of Realtors said sales of previously occupied homes, which make up the bulk of the market, dipped 2.7 percent last month.

While August's housing reports have been disappointing, "we believe both remain on an upward trend," wrote David Resler, chief economist with Nomura Securities.

Builders continue to make severe cuts in prices to attract buyers. The median sales price of $195,200 was off 11.7 percent from $221,000 a year earlier, and 9.5 percent below July's level of $215,600. That was the largest monthly drop on records dating to 1963.

There were 262,000 new homes for sale at the end of August, down more than 3 percent from July and the lowest in nearly 17 years. At the current sales pace, that represents 7.3 months of supply -- the smallest amount since early 2007. The decline means builders have scaled back construction to the point where supply and demand are coming into balance.

Still, it's taking more than a year to sell the homes on the market.

"No one ever said that the homebuilders were breaking out the bubbly and party hats and doing the cha-cha around town," wrote Jennifer Lee, economist with BMO Capital Markets.

Buyers, meanwhile, are rushing to take advantage of a federal tax credit that covers 10 percent of the home price, or up to $8,000 for first-time owners. Home sales must be completed by the end of November for buyers to qualify. Builders and real estate agents are pressing Congress for that credit to be extended.

Sales varied dramatically around the country. The best performance was in the West, where sales rose more than 12 percent, and the worst was in the Northeast, where sales sank more than 16 percent. They were unchanged in the South, and down nearly 6 percent in the Midwest.

Meanwhile, KB Home posted a smaller third-quarter loss of $66 million on Friday as new home orders increased and the builder cut costs. Though the results missed analysts' expectations, KB Home said its new orders jumped 62 percent in the third quarter from the year before, with every region showing annual growth.

And fewer homebuyers backed out. The company's cancellation rate dropped to 27 percent during the quarter, compared with 51 percent a year ago.

[thomas1234]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumer sentiment rose in late September to the highest since January 2008 as expectations of an economic rebound gathered momentum, a survey showed on Friday.

The data added to indications the economy is pulling out of a lengthy recession more powerfully than many analysts had expected a few months ago, although doubts persist about how much staying power the rebound may have.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its final index of sentiment for September rose to 73.5 from 65.7 in August. This was above economists' median expectation for a reading of 70.3, according to a Reuters poll.

The index of consumer expectations rose to 73.5, the highest in two years, from 65.0 in August.

U.S. stock indexes initially bounced on the news but then slipped, while Treasury debt prices were off slightly and the dollar fell against the yen and euro.

"The same pace of gains in confidence continued in late September as the economic news reaching consumers grew even more positive," the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said in a statement. "Consumers reported that the economy had already begun to improve and anticipated further gains in the year ahead."

The index of current conditions rose to 73.4 in late September from 66.6 in August.

"It looks like people feel better about both current conditions and the future. If we can only get business sentiment to improve a bit more, we'd probably go from a yellow light to a green light," said Gary Thayer, macro strategist with Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis. "If business sentiment picks up, the job situation would improve and consumer sentiment will improve further."

The survey's 12-month economic outlook jumped to 88 in late September from 69 in late August.

"The data provide considerable evidence that the economy has already begun to recover," the Reuters/UMich statement said. "Nonetheless, the pace of gains in consumer spending are still expected to be slower than usual due to expected lags in job and income gains as well as the renewed desires of consumers to save and the more limited availability of credit."

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