Too Slow for a Frappuccino

The dog days of summer are here and as we go through cycles of heat wave to cool temperatures, we all need something to help us unwind or relax during the day. Some would say that you should have a good drink to relax. For some, a good drink would mean alcohol and although statistics show that a growing number of people have alcohol during their lunch hours, it isn't exactly something that will instill confidence in employers. So, other than soda, most of us turn to a staple of years past. Coffee.

Now some would argue against the logic of having a coffee when it's already hot out, but that's not exactly what I'm saying. Unless you've been living in a dark cave somewhere in the Ural Mountains you would know that the chain Starbucks sells a drink known as the Frappuccino. Basically they take the coffee and pour it over ice before blending it into a Slurpee-esque drink. They are immensely popular, especially on hot days and virtually anyone who sells coffee these days will have some version of it or the other. But as the creators of the phenomena, no one sells more of them than Starbucks.

With that fact in mind it was a little surprising to find out that the latest sales report from Starbucks indicated that their sales for the last quarter had slowed. According to the management, sales had likely fallen off due to the Frappuccino. What? Does that make sense? A drink that has become a staple of any coffee chain is to blame for falling sales? Well, the higher-ups at Starbucks claim that since the drink takes longer to make than a regular coffee drink, the result is longer lines which leads most of our ADD-prone society to bug out and head someplace else. Now me personally? I don't think that arguement holds any water whatsoever.

Why would I say that? Well let's take a look. If there was only one or two Starbucks in a ten mile radius, I could understand the rush. But let's look at the major metropolitan centers where Starbucks thrives and that's the cities and upper echelon neighborhoods in suburbia. In the town of Vienna, Virginia (close to where I live) you could literally go for a stretch of five miles hoping across the street from one Starbucks to another. I grant you that it is a franchise, and a fairly popular and successful one, but then it begs the question, how can there be long lines everywhere? Logically there can't be. Perhaps the reason for it may be tied into the fact that overall costs of living are on the rise and the amount of disposable income is decreasing. I mean after all, the choice now is between filling up your tank with a frappuccino or filling up your car with fuel! And I don't think they've come up with a way to run cars on coffee slurpees yet.