Starbucks profits went down 97% in the 4th quarter. Uh-oh! The Apocalypse is here. We all feared the day this would come…. When you could be in Manhattan, standing in front of a starbucks and there wasn’t another starbucks across the street from you. O: !!! Shocking! Shocking!

NEW YORK (AP) — Fewer U.S. customers and venti-sized costs for closing poorly performing stores led to lower sales and profit in the fourth quarter at Starbucks Corp., the company said Monday.

The quarter’s results came at the end of a transition year for the coffee retailer, in which former Chief Executive Howard Schultz took back the reins of the company to again fill the CEO and chairman posts.

Seattle-based Starbucks said profit in the quarter fell 97 percent to $5.4 million, or a penny a share, from $158.5 million, or 21 cents per share. The coffee retailer earned 10 cents per share when the costs from closing about 600 stores in the U.S. and 61 locations in Australia are excluded.

Analysts expected profit of 13 cents per share, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

Starbucks began shutting the U.S. and Australian stores this summer as part of its nearly yearlong campaign to reverse slowing sales and falling profits at the company. Besides closing the stores, Starbucks has cut more than 1,000 positions — many of which were unfilled — and introduced a slew of new products, including Vivanno smoothie drinks and breakfast pastries.

America, I’m talking to YOU America, this Utopian Country of excess is soon coming to an end, savor it niggas! The economy is in the shitter (let’s hope just for now) but let not our iPods, fancy TVs and Quesadilla makers delude us from the fact that shit is hitting the fan.

Just ’cause you’re reading about it from your iPhone app, doesn’t make the Apocalypse any less real.

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Posted: November 11th, 2008 under OMG, news, politics, rant.
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