I have come to the land where Starbucks calls home and they rule!

I have never seen so many Starbucks in one place in all my life. I know that their corporate headquarters is downtown Seattle, but sheesh, is it absolutely necessary to put a store on every corner? I exaggerate little.

Arriving in the airport, from our gate to the baggage claim, we passed four Starbucks. As soon as we pulled out of the airport we passed another. Stopping at a supermarket, there was one inside, a totally separate one outside two stores down and one at the entrance of the shopping center immediately next door. In one four block stretch, there were three. Everywhere you look you see the green and white circular logo.

What’s even more amazing is that none of these stores were empty! In fact, most had a line of folks waiting to order.

I had to ask if perhaps the water was contaminated out here and the only way to purify it was to brew a special Starbucks-made coffee in it. I was assured that such was not the case. During a recent windstorm that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people for 4-5 days, there were traffic jams all over the suburbs of Seattle because people were trying to find a Starbucks that had power for coffee!

Folks out here are proud of the company. Even if they don’t drink coffee! You’d think they were a sports team — the Starbucks Coffee.

If I’m not mistaken, there is a another small company out here that could gobble up Starbucks money-wise and never even know that they had expended funds to do it that goes by the moniker of “Microsoft.” But nobody talks about them, especially not in the way they talk about Starbucks. One is a business and the other is family. Who cares about a business; you always talk about a relative that did good by himself.

Going into any of these establishments you are impressed with the employees. Friendly, knowledgeable, considerate. They seemingly really want to serve you. I was impressed.

Mind you, I’ve been into many a Starbucks. The impression holds in most of them. What is getting my attention here in Seattle is that a) there are so many and b) they are so consistently driven to provide a great product and a great impression. They want you to come back. You want to go back. Even as I’m typing this I’m trying to figure out how to justify running up to the corner store for a mocha. This is way too convenient!

Could there be a lesson here?