Saturday, March 7, 2009

Franchise Motifs

Your paradigm coffee shop in our Coffee Shops Network is run by a bevy of networking types, our icon being Romany Marie from those long ago days in Greenwich Village. Fine Grind was and is paradigmatic.

Another thread is the large well-equipped bakery, lots of stainless steel, with the mythology that this comes from shipboard, from the naval tradition, those fast food kitchens being the "dumbed down" landlubber versions of the really good kitchens at sea ("think ney").

Add in the pirate motif, quite important, and you get female sea captains piloting our prototypes, helping steer computer science in productive directions, per our socially responsible business model.

Keeping the philosophy high caliber is part of the formula for success, and that expresses in branding and marketing. "What's a Princeton philosophy degree good for?" you ask. "Selling Arabica beans, Sumatran, Columbian..." and of course we keep a hand in the tea business as well.

Rumors that Bob Dobbs is our CEO are intriguing. Looking into it.