Starbucks reinvented fast food by taking a reasonably-good product and convincing consumers that it was gourmet.
Then Starbucks started being thought of as too fast-foody, so it reinvented itself as eco-chic (I mean, come on. $3.50 for a bottle of water, a dime of which goes to the third world? Why not drink out of the tap and send, oh, I don’t know, $3.50 to charity?)
Then Starbucks started being thought of as too corporate. So their solution: buy a smaller line of faux-gourmet coffee. And market the new ownership by — yes — joking that the new (already-corporate) company they just purchased were guerrilla hipsters bent on toppling Starbucks itself.
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Through this all, of course, my thoughts are with the brave men and women in uniform, and whether they will receive their pounds of coffee.