They’ve taken over the world

Just how friggin’ brilliant can Starbucks get??

“… if you drive toward the downtown core of any major American city, you’ll see that almost every Starbucks you pass is on your right. Why? The company’s real estate team long ago figured out that the hassle of making a left turn across traffic to reach a Starbucks, then another left to get going in the original direction again, could be enough to dissuade a hurried morning commuter from stopping in. By building each store to the inbound driver’s right, the company made that daily latte even more (wait for it…) convenient.

Here’s another one: Why would Starbucks want to locate its cafes next to video stores and dry cleaners? Because they double a potential customer’s contact with a given Starbucks. The company knows that cafes draw patrons in proportion to the number of people who happen to walk by, and unlike any other businesses, video stores and dry cleaners require two visits: one to drop something off and one to pick it up. So for every time a prospective customer needed to rent a movie, he would have two chances to buy a Frappuccino.”
- extracted from Starbucked, Taylor Clark