I have always been hyper-critical of Starbucks (SBUX).
I remember covering the company as a stock analyst and spending weeks inside of its stores studying workflows of each department. It was an extreme exercise that did not win me any fans amongst Starbucks management (especially with former CEO Howard Schultz), but I was young, didn’t give a damn what management thought, and believed it had to be done to make a proper call on the stock.
I cut my rating on Starbucks to sell in January 2014, citing an increasingly complex operating system that was hurting margins, sales potential and employee relations. Then I wrote an op-ed on CNBC, leaning into the call in the hopes that investors didn’t get burned. That, too, didn’t win me any fans at Starbucks.
More than 10 years later, my job has changed, I have personally evolved (though am still as intense as I was in 2014, just in different…
