Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz recently announced that the company would close 600 of its approximately 12,000 American stores in the coming year, sending 12,000 managers and baristas to the unemployment line.
But as Starbucks contracts, many independent coffee shops are growing, beating the coffee giant in an upscale market it helped to create.
As anti-corporate crusaders are now discovering, instead of advocating for legal prohibitions on chain stores or attempting to zone the offending businesses off of Main Street USA, mom-and-pop shops can successfully combat the coffee behemoth by using old-fashioned market competition.
reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan and Dan Hayes investigate.