Starbucks

In Baltimore, where the scarcity of Starbucks was elevated to the level of civic crisis just a few years ago, residents are now drowning in a frothy flood of gingerbread lattes and gasping for air under a mountain of cinnamon scones. The Seattle coffee giant has opened three stores in Baltimore in the past three months, the result of years of lobbying by the city and a recognition by Starbucks that Baltimoreans are as willing to pay $4 for a macchiato as anyone else. This, civic leaders say, is a good thing.

Downs Engravers & Stationers 2500 Boston St., Canton Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. 410-752-7770 Looking for a clever card for Valentine's Day? How about some fine paper for those Christmas thank-you notes you never got around to writing? You might find what you need at Downs Engravers & Stationers' new, 1,000-square-foot store in the Flagship Building at The Can Company in Canton. (To find it, locate the Starbucks on Boston Street. It's a few feet away.

The polar bears of Arctic Tale have gotten a chilly reception in movie theaters despite Starbucks Corp.'s serving up promotional materials in thousands of stores. The Paramount Classics documentary, co-financed by National Geographic Films, has failed to draw the crowds that flocked to other recent environmental movies such as Oscar-winners March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth. Costing less than $5 million to produce, the film has grossed roughly $600,000 domestically since its release July 25. Although the coffee giant has broadened its reach as a cultural tastemaker through music and book sales, Arctic Tale is another example of the green mermaid's golden touch failing to transfer to movies.

Riverside Roastery and Espresso, one of Howard County's favorite local coffee shops, will probably never be the caffeinated behemoth that is Starbucks, but that's OK by owner Michael Lentz.Lentz and his wife, Jill, opened the first Riverside Roastery on historic Ellicott City's Main Street in 1993.Since then, they've slowly expanded their mini-java empire. Two Columbia locations -- one in Hickory Plaza near Hickory Ridge Village Center and another near the auto park off Dobbin Road -- have brought the national coffee obsession to a strip mall near you.The Hickory Ridge shop, which the Lentzes co-own with Bill Martin, opened this summer.

SEATTLE -- There's a reading-related reason to root for Mark McGwire this year: The Starbucks Foundation is donating $5,000 to children's charities with literacy programs for each home run hit by the St. Louis Cardinals slugger.The nonprofit foundation, created to support charitable causes in communities where the Seattle-based Starbucks company conducts business, guaranteed that donations would total at least $250,000, with each $5,000 gift going to programs in the host city where the home run is hit.Unfortunately, that will not include Baltimore.

His mother's stroke caused Michael Fragnito to fly to her side, but it was something he found in her attic that brought them together.What Fragnito uncovered was the diary his mother had written before he was born. In its pages, he discovered a woman filled with the dreams and uncertainties of youth, a person Fragnito had never known about.The diary transformed their relationship. As his mother recovered at her home in Daytona Beach, Fla., Fragnito quizzed her about her early married life in post-war Brooklyn, about his late father, about her thoughts and fears at the time.

WASHINGTON -- District police appear closer to solving the 1997 triple homicide at a Georgetown Starbucks, questioning a suspect yesterday and continuing to interrogate another man who has long been under investigation for a possible role in the crime.But police said last night that neither man has been charged in the Starbucks case."We do have some very strong leads we're pursuing right now, and hopefully it will result in our ability to be able to close the case," police Chief Charles Ramsey said in a radio interview on WTOP yesterday.

Seattle-based Starbucks Corp., which reported slower-than-expected sales growth for July, saw its stock weaken yesterday for the second time in a week.Yesterday's 12 percent drop to $41.875 a share reflects concerns about the gourmet coffee retailer's ventures to extend its brand, rather than signaling a slowdown in consumers' consumption of specialty coffee drinks, analysts said."The businesses they're going into that are not retail store-oriented are ramping up a little more slowly than expected, and the costs associated with them are greater than expected," said Andy Barish, an analyst with BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in San Francisco.

Want some coffee?Decaf or regular? Swiss Mocha or Columbia Narino Supremo? Cappuccino or frappuccino? Riboflavin or pantothenic acid?Huh?Coffee lingo and the array of flavors got confusing long ago. But now the Starbucks Coffee Company has complicated the decision even more with its Power Frappuccino. For an extra 50 cents, you can get the frosty drink in a fortified version filled with vitamins and other nutrients.Coffee and vitamins? Vitamins in coffee? Healthy coffee? Is this some sort of oxymoron?

Make a spidery treat for HalloweenThis cookbook is so charming it's scary. The new "Halloween Treats" (Chronicle, $14.95) by Donata Maggipinto is cute as a bat's ear, filled with recipes and crafts. Here's one for the cookies pictured above:Sweetie Spiders3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar48 thin black licorice strings, each 6 inches long12 chocolate sandwich cookies24 red cinnamon candiesAdd 3 or 4 drops of water to the confectioners' sugar to make a thick paste. Cut the licorice strings in half.

Starbucks to close 7 Maryland stores Starbucks Coffee Company said this week it is closing 195 stores across the country, including seven in Maryland, as consumers worried about the economy continue to cut back on luxuries such as gourmet coffee. In the Baltimore area, the Seattle-based company will close a store at Westfield Annapolis mall as well as the location at 300 N. Charles St. in downtown Baltimore. Starbucks has more than 200 stores in Maryland. Andrea K. Walker China's reserves at $1.9 trillion BEIJING : China's central bank says its foreign exchange reserves rose 16 percent year-on-year to $1.954 trillion by the end of March.

Starbucks Corp. said yesterday that it will eliminate about 6,700 jobs because of the difficult economy. The company becomes the latest to announce job losses and joined major employers such as AOL and Boeing yesterday in detailing layoffs to cope with the current recession. Starbucks said its profit dropped 69 percent in its fiscal first quarter, to $64.3 million. Starbucks said it will close 300 underperforming stores in addition to the 600 it already planned to close in the United States.

Now that Starbucks Corp. has disclosed the 600 locations it wants to shutter, a phenomenon is taking hold: the Save Our Starbucks campaign. In towns as small as Bloomfield, N.M., and metropolises as large as New York, customers and city officials are starting to write letters, place phone calls, circulate petitions and otherwise plead with the coffee company to change its mind. "Now that it's going away, we're devastated," said Kate Walker, a facilities manager for software company SunGard Financial Systems who recently learned of a store closing in New York City.

"They should put a surgeon general's warning on coffee," I once said in jest. But it's not a joke. Whether you're a writer like me, a businessman, a sales rep, a news anchor, an airline pilot, a cop, an orthopedic surgeon, a tax attorney, a pop star or the girl who gets propelled 20 feet in the air by a dolphin at SeaWorld - whoever you are, you're probably a member of the Coffee Club. And if you're not, you will be soon, because when Dunkin' Donuts first coined its motto, "America runs on Dunkin," it wasn't far off the mark.

Profit at coffee megachain Starbucks fell sharply in the first quarter, and the company also missed Wall Street's expectations and said it was cutting back on U.S. store expansions. Starbucks made 15 cents a share when analysts had expected 19 cents, on average. Profit fell 28 percent for the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2007. The company blamed the recession. Doesn't everybody? "Fiscal 2008 is a transitional year for Starbucks, and, while our financial results are clearly being impacted by reduced frequency to our U.S. stores, we believe that as we continue to execute on the initiatives generated by our transformation agenda, we will reinvigorate the Starbucks experience for our customers, and in doing so, deliver increased value to our shareholders," company boss Howard Schultz said in a rather breathless sentence in a news release.

There is understandable angst in Seattle now that the SuperSonics appear closer to becoming the Oklahoma City Wranglers or whatever. And it's also understandable that Seattle fans are looking for any glimmer of hope that carpetbagger owner Clay Bennett can be derailed in his bid to relocate the franchise. There's pending litigation initiated by the city to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and just yesterday came word that the team's former owner, Howard Schultz of Starbucks fame and fortune, plans to file suit to regain the team, contending that Bennett bought the club under misleading circumstances.

MammoJam The lowdown -- The Reserves, Virginia Coalition, Erin McKeown and Offbeat Magazine's 2007 "Performer of the Year" Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue will play at the fifth annual MammoJam Music Festival at the 8x10 Saturday. The event, which supports the fight against breast cancer, includes a silent auction and catering by local restaurants. If you go -- The festival runs 6 p.m.-midnight. The 8x10 is at 10 E. Cross St. Tickets are $40-$50. VIP packages are $80. Call 410-456-2614 or go to mammojammusic festival.

In keeping with the tradition of reviewing the old year, as we begin a new one, I am offering a look back at some of the topics that have appeared in this space under my name. It is a chance for me to share with faithful readers what happened next. For a holiday column, I wrote about the efforts of a handful of Starbucks managers in the Annapolis area to collect coffee for the troops overseas. They asked their regular customers to buy a pound of beans and donate it, and the Starbucks employees, who receive a free bag of beans each week as part of their benefits, donated theirs.

In Baltimore, where the scarcity of Starbucks was elevated to the level of civic crisis just a few years ago, residents are now drowning in a frothy flood of gingerbread lattes and gasping for air under a mountain of cinnamon scones. The Seattle coffee giant has opened three stores in Baltimore in the past three months, the result of years of lobbying by the city and a recognition by Starbucks that Baltimoreans are as willing to pay $4 for a macchiato as anyone else. This, civic leaders say, is a good thing.

SEATTLE -- Starbucks launched its first national television advertising campaign yesterday to drive more people into U.S. stores, which saw a 1 percent falloff in traffic last summer. U.S. sales still rose 19 percent, partly because of a 9-cent price increase on coffee drinks, according to Starbucks Corp.'s fourth-quarter earnings released Thursday. The first-ever traffic decline has executives worried, and they announced several broad initiatives: conducting a prime-time TV campaign between now and Christmas, having district managers spend more time in stores and cutting back on the variety of drinks they serve.