Each week, more than 33 million folks worldwide pass through a Starbucks. Plus, up to three Starbucks open every day somewhere on the globe.

Consider the Starbucks effect in the slogans written up recently in Fast Company magazine, where companies from various sectors now aspire to be the 'Starbucks of their respective industry': ...

On my three-block walk to the subway I noticed not one, not two, but four Starbucks, which was quite a high concentration of retail outlets even for the Queen of Caffeine.

Companies now want to turn themselves into “the Starbucks of the ham business” or “the Starbucks of fuel-injector makers.”

Many people began to wonder whether we really needed two Starbucks directly across the street from each other.

Said the CEO of the nearly 500-plus store Caribou Coffee chain, “I got into the business because of what they [Starbucks] created.” In China, a small chain, Real Brewed Tea, aims to be “the Starbucks of tea.”

I swear, if I had been drinking my Starbucks today it would have gone up my nose.

One part-time sociologist made an even more damning indictment: “Calling yourself a coffee nerd while drinking Starbucks is like calling yourself a beer nerd while drinking Budweiser.”

I read it straight through while I drank three Starbucks.

“Good, have they got coffee?” Lorraine nodded. “Yes, they’ve been in since about eight and brought Starbucks.”

US Weekly’s regular photographic feature, “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” which features celebrities engaged in such mundanities as pumping their own gas or drinking Starbucks, is a direct visual demonstration of this condescending simulated intimacy.

Starbucks

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