Starbucks: America's scapegoat

If you read the papers fairly regularly, you probably know that Starbucks is closing 600 of its stores. There are a lot of reasons for this, as The New York Times recently explained, including high gas prices, high food costs, and a generally lousy economy, which, if the stock market today is any indicator, isn't going to be improving any time soon.

All of this equals fewer people drinking coffee.

But The New York Times also pointed out that Starbucks had a plan to grow exponentially. In 2004, it announced that it would double its speed of expansion and reach 15,000 stores in the United States, twice its current 7,000 stores.