Saturday, September 9, 2006

Niiice...

...by the time Babcock opened Zoka in 1997, after a stint in the coffee business in Florida, Starbucks had grown more institutional. He wanted Zoka to have that something special that he remembered from Starbucks' early days.

"I wanted to be the Porsche, not the Ford," he said.
- Associated Press, September 8, 2006

11 comments:

  1. will Zoka be able to maintain this small feeling while adding franchises in Japan or is it just a matter of time before cobra kai becomes corporate coffee?

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  2. We only have 4 stores total. Two in Seattle..,and soon to be three in Tokyo. The Japanese ones are not a franchise, (if that makes any difference to you). On the bags at Zoka Japan it says "where coffee is a craft, not a corporation"...I think that was a Sherri Johns-ism.
    How big is big? How many stores does Artigiano have in Vancouver...how many in Korea?
    How many shops does Intelly have, buy the way? Just in Chicago.

    Hey, Mike White, do you live in San Jose? I used to know a Mike White.

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  3. hee he,..check out mu telling typo..."buy the way"
    maybe I'm jus tin this for the money.

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  4. hey trish, never even been. NYC through and through. Maybe someday you'll know this mike white in NYC instead.

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  5. hi trish, I didn't mean to come off so snarky. I was hoping for more of a news headline or "in next week's episode of superman..." tone. So, you folks own the Japan stores outright or is it more of a licensed store or product supplying situation?

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  6. it's a licencing deal..think of them kind of like our largest wholesale customer. I didn'r consider it snarky at all that you asked. Just wanted to explore what people out there believe is "big". And is "big" really all that bad?

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  7. hey guys -- I got the latest 'cast (good as always), but there's no entry here on the site in which to make comments on! What gives?

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  8. this is a big week for portafilters. i'm sure they were just too busy (it's up now)

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