No, it’s not highly caffeinated employees. It’s, apparently, a feeling that their business would be better served by, at least in some cases, avoiding the name that built its brand.
First, the story from The Seattle Times:
When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks? When it’s a 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.
The ubiquitous coffee-shop giant is dropping the household name from its 15th Avenue East store on Capitol Hill, a shop that was slated to close at one point last year but is being remodeled in Starbucks’ new rustic, eco-friendly style.
It will open next week, the first of at least three remodeled Seattle-area stores that will bear the names of their neighborhoods rather than the 16,000-store chain to which they belong.
Names and locations for the other two shops have not been finalized. If the pilot goes well in Seattle, it could move to other markets.
The new names are meant to give the stores “a community personality,” said Tim Pfeiffer, senior vice president of global design. Starbucks’ logo will be absent, with bags of the company’s coffee and other products rebranded with the 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea name.
When I was at The Sun in San Bernardino, I wrote about a parallel phenomena affecting the old American Baptist Church in Colton. That story is no longer online, but this link from Adherents.com carries numerous similar stories. The common theme: American Baptist and Southern Baptist congregations dropping Baptist from the name outside their building and opting for something more nondenominational.
After the jump, a 2000 column from The Bergen Record both summarizes and mocks the movement:
