Has-beans

The darling of daily City life, the coffee, is feeling the strain with Coffee Republic going into administration last week and the administrators from KPMG closing 10 or the 17 company-run stores, though the situation with the franchise stores isn’t clear. Coffee Republic have fallen behind in the coffee arms-race of late and are paying the price for it now but there are promising signs with administrators saying that the chain could be bought out of administration by the end of this week.

I gather even the mighty Starbucks isn’t immune from the downturn in “discretionary spending” as some staff at their head office have been “offered” redeployment to stores as the head office is being slimmed down. Now I’m no employment lawyer but if they make you an offer of a different job and you decline it does that stop being redundancy and make it resignation? Either way it’s not an entirely promising sign for the future of the morning Cappucino, etc but I’m sure the coffee chains won’t go down without a fight

Moorgate Musings – pt 1

The new Starbucks down at the Bank end of Moorgate, which seems to have taken for ever to finish, is now open for business. Whether you do or don’t like Starbucks it should at least demonstrate Alan Coren’s Sainsburys Effect on the neighbouring establishments:
“The only thing I know about Sainsburys is that it keeps the riff-raff out of Waitrose”.

Directly opposite Starbucks Bluu Brasserie is advertising 50% off wine so if you need something to get the taste of Starbucks out of your mouth then a quick crawl across the road can sort you out. I’m sure that “terms & conditions apply” so do read the small print before you crack open the Moet but as I haven’t been in there myself any of your observations are welcome.

Lastly, in the “old news” section I couldn’t resist a mention for the new Pret A Manger on Coleman Street which is not only very nice indeed but is also quite quiet being tucked away behind Moorgate in Coleman Street. They’ve demonstrated to Starbucks, who I hope were paying attention, how to open a nice new establishment without taking months to finish it.