Starbucks

A Harford County site is one of two finalists in a five-state competition for an Eastern processing and distribution center for Starbucks Corp., the Seattle-based coffee chain that is expanding rapidly in the Eastern United States.Craig Kinzer, a Seattle relocation consultant working for Starbucks, said the finalists are York, Pa., and the Riverside Business Park in Belcamp, where Starbucks is considering a deal for a site controlled by the Obrecht family, longtime players in Baltimore-area development.

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.

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.

SEATTLE -- For beer drinkers who get sleepy after a brew or two, a new beer with a kick is on the way.Starbucks Coffee Co. and Redhook Ale Brewery have joined forces to brew Double Black Stout, a dark roasted malt beer brewed by Redhook with the added flavor of Starbucks coffee. )) The brew will have 30 milligrams of caffeine per 22-ounce bottle, one-quarter the strength of a cup of regular drip coffee. Beer ordinarily has no caffeine.As specialty and flavored beers increase in popularity, some say the coffee combination has a good chance of success.

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.

The owner of a Timonium-based coffee company -- and the abbot of a tiny monastery in Washington state -- are steamed over what they see as heavy-handed tactics by Starbucks Corp. to protect its trademark for its "Christmas Blend" holiday coffee.Two East Coast distributors of specialty coffee -- Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co. Inc. and a sister venture in Williamsburg, Va. -- were warned by letter this month that marketing their holiday coffee as Christmas Blend infringed on a federally protected trademark.

Like the caffeine that flows through the veins of its customers, the Starbucks coffee shop in the Harbour Center strip mall is part of the chemistry of Annapolis. Beginning at 5:30 a.m., cars pull in and out of the parking spaces like bees at a honeycomb as commuters to Washington and Baltimore get their coffee hits here at one of the busiest Starbucks shops in the country. "Our guests are loyal and they have their routines," says manager Lesley Ann Smith. When next-door neighbor Fresh Fields opens at 9 a.m., Starbucks experiences another bump as shoppers get coffee to nurse as they push the grocery cart.

Next month, a 3-foot Starbucks logo will adorn the historic Main Street facade where inside Revolutionary schemes were once traded over draughts of ale and cider. The opening of the city's third outlet of the worldwide coffee chain in late March will cap a year of securing city approvals and renovations in the Maryland Inn - but it is not likely to decaffeinate the controversy. For a few critics, including Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, another link of the worldwide gourmet coffee chain was about as welcome as the British Redcoats back in Washington's day. She called the idea "a missed opportunity for something really special."

WASHINGTON -- In the last journal entry that Caity Mahoney ever composed, just before her death in a triple slaying at a Georgetown Starbucks coffee shop, she recalled a conversation with her family. She was feeling guilty about having fired someone she supervised and had sought comfort in her relatives."I spoke to Mom, Dad, Ginny and my grandmas today," Mahoney wrote. "It was so good to hear their loving voices."That journal sits in the Baltimore home of Mahoney's mother, offering a small glimpse of the last days of her daughter's life.

Safeway is using its Canton store to test whether lattes and mochas sell as well as tiki torches and multicolored coolers as impulse buys. Teaming up with coffee giant Starbucks Corp., Safeway will unveil a small, full-service Starbucks coffee bar next month right across from the fresh flowers, near the store's entrance. Gregory TenEyck, director of public affairs for Safeway Inc.'s Eastern division, said the Pleasanton, Calif., chain will use its store in one of the city's trendiest enclaves to determine the viability of incorporating Starbucks into other Safeway stores.