Starbucks

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.

Comedian Dennis Miller was kidding when he said they were about to open a Starbucks inside another Starbucks, but in Towson, it looks like the joke won't be far from the truth. For the past few years, Towson residents and shoppers have had the choice of getting their super-strong Seattle brew in the Barnes & Noble in the old Hutzler's building downtown or in Towson Town Center just across Joppa Road. A few months ago, another Starbucks opened in the Dulaney Plaza shopping center, across the street from the mall.

Roger Scheumann is on the phone from Quartermaine Coffee Roasters in Rockville. He sounds alarmed."People feel invaded," he says. "They can't get away from it. I think people ultimately want choices in their life, about lots of things, and it's sort of like not being able to turn off the radio. You can't turn off the conduit, the pipeline."It's not some drug threat from Central America that has $l Scheumann agitated. It's not a new virus or some sinister "X Files"-style life form. It's coffee -- specifically Starbucks coffee, that ubiquitous, take-no-prisoners brand, that bottomless cup into which our caffeine-loving country is falling.

In the history of coffee, Baltimore holds some claim to fame. The London Coffee House in Fells Point is the last surviving coffeehouse that predates the American Revolution. Much of the Brazilian coffee that came to the United States in the late 1800s landed at the city's wharves. And an H.C. Lockwood of Baltimore received a patent in 1873 for a paper coffee package lined with tin foil - credited as the start of modern coffee packaging. So why is Baltimore the city Starbucks forgot? Many people in Baltimore lament that the city has relatively few of the Seattle company's coffeehouses.

John Winter Smith is nothing if not an optimist. For eight years, he has chased a goal that he admits he may never achieve: to visit every Starbucks Coffee Co. store in the world. The Silver Spring resident has bought coffee at more than 4,500 of the chain's outlets in North America and 213 overseas. He recently added stores in Ocean City, Waldorf and Accokeek to his tally. Yet he still has a long way to go. How many more stores? Maybe 100 or 200 in North America, hundreds more overseas.

George Washington is said to have gambled away a horse there. Later, jazz legend Charlie Byrd serenaded fans in late-night jam sessions in the cozy brick room. And, if the Annapolis historic preservation commission goes along tonight, you'll be able to order a tall pumpkin spice latte in the room, in the basement of the Maryland Inn. Plans by Starbucks to occupy the former King of France Tavern have some city leaders lamenting an encroaching sameness in the heart of the Colonial capital.

Downtown's west side could be getting something not even Fells Point, Federal Hill or Canton can claim: a full-fledged Starbucks coffeehouse. The Seattle-based chain is negotiating to move into space being built at the northeast corner of Baltimore and Eutaw streets in Bank of America's Centerpoint retail and residential complex, city economic official Sharon R. Grinnell confirmed Friday. Perhaps to provide local balance, the bank's development team is also talking to owners of Kali's Court restaurant in Fells Point about opening a place on Eutaw Street across from the 2,250-seat Hippodrome Theatre.

Starbucks is renewing its efforts to put a 21st-century coffee shop in the 18th-century Maryland Inn in Annapolis. The idea drew protests when it was first raised a few months ago, but the Seattle-based corporation has modified its plan and won some important supporters for the idea of opening a high-end coffee shop in a place that once housed a tavern visited by George Washington. The Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission is scheduled to consider tonight proposed changes to the property's exterior to accommodate a Starbucks-licensed store - similar to a franchise.

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.

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.