Starbucks woes

What a coincidence!!! We were given a case study on starbucks and was due tonight. First it was Howard Schultz, coming back to take over as the CEO. There was another news of how they closed down an evening to train its baristas [ they call all entry level employees as baristas]. Now its US operations president steps down and wants to spend time with her folks. Starbucks' revenue seems to be slowing down due to various reasons, be it competition from low end players like Dunkin Donuts..who are offering 99 cents coffee or from regionally specialty coffee houses. Even on the international front, I had read a news of how Coffee Day, the indian starbucks, got hell lot of funding to take over the europe, middle eastern and african markets. So starbucks may be in real trouble both in domestic and international markets. The fierce competition is so evident that starbucks is climbing down to offer 99 cents coffee too. Coffee day has taken a leaf from starbucks and is replicating the samething like offering an atmosphere to drink coffee. I still remember that coffee day also had the same model of operating its own shop and started with offering whole beans as well as ground/roast powder. The only advantage coffee day has over others is that its run by SM Krishna's [ex-chief minister of karnataka] son-in-law and coincidently started when Krishna was CM of karnataka, they also have access to coffee planters co-operatives in kodagu region. You can call it the coffee cartels...now a venture that has the blessing of cartel and super politician, can do anything to stop starbucks from entering indian markets. Indian govt will never allow a perfect competitive market as its always into over protecting its companies. This means starbucks forays into India is impossible, but they can do one thing to limit coffee day's entry into US markets but europe, middle east, asia and africa is already into coffee day's kitty, now what is to be seen is...would starbucks and coffee day open up their arms and form a JV? Doing so would open coffee day's entry into US and starbucks could get a free source in return and go in for zoning the world of who takes which part. Only Time will tell what happens. But as of now..starbucks seem to be sliding down due to recession concerns, rising costs of coffee, milk and transportations.