There are certain places associated with certain groups of people. When I hung out with partiers and drinkers, the place of choice was usually Denny’s or Steak n’ Shake… anything that was open 24 hours a day. Since I’ve been a Christian, I realize that the main restaurant of choice is Chick-Fil-A. I would even go as far as to say that Chick-Fil-A is God’s gift to fast food!

What’s my favorite meal at Chick-Fil-A? A chicken sandwich, no pickles, with lettuce and tomato. Thanks to Johnny, I now put Chick-Fil-A sauce on the sandwich which gives it a little bit more awesomeness. And thanks to a trick I learned from my friend Katina back in middle school, I mix ketchup and mayo to dip my waffle fries in… my friends, it is glorious. Top that off with some sweet tea and I’m happy.

It’s funny, every Monday our middle school pastor Tim always gets us guys together and we have lunch. My vote is almost always for Chick-Fil-A. Occasionally Noah will get his way and we’ll eat at McDonald’s or Wendy’s… but I scoff at such places. I don’t know what it is, I ate enough McDonald’s and Wendy’s in high school and it just doesn’t appeal to me anymore (except for the occasional Frosty).

Perhaps the things I like most about Chick-Fil-A are: family-friendliness (even though it’s packed with kids, I can deal with that), great staff, clean restaurant, and good food. I will insert one caveat here. I don’t know what it is, but the mall locations don’t seem to have the same standards… but I’m willing to deal with that.

By now most of you are thinking, “Kiel, did you really write a post about Chick-Fil-A?” Yes I did, that just happened. I mostly did it because I wanted to share this funny little music video. So enjoy and remember to “eat mor chikn.”

Howard Schultz

On February 26th, Starbucks Coffee stores across the country closed for three hours for an employee “espresso training.” It is in my opinion that such a drastic move was made by Howard Schultz, one of the original founders of Starbucks who has recently returned to the company.

Is this move similar to Steve Jobs returning to Apple? I’m sure Schultz left Starbucks a few years ago on good terms, but it seems that the company has lost its soul.

When Starbucks first came to Indianapolis, I was pretty excited. I remember when there were only a few locations and the experience felt truly unique. Why?

Because you had a core group of dedicated employees (partners) and a great atmosphere. But Starbucks has grown so much, so fast, that they have sacrificed service for increased market share at the expense of the Starbucks experience.

If you want to read a good book about Starbucks and really feel the passion that Schultz has for this company, read Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. It is written by Schultz and shows the dedication and commitment to quality. I actually became more interested in Starbucks because of that book!

But the problem is that when you have such explosive growth, you have to have someone to be there to make the drinks. Working at Starbucks, for some, is just another job… and I don’t believe, having read Schultz’s book, that this is something he would appreciate. There are other things that have “cheapened” the Starbucks experience: automated espresso machines, drive-thru, store design, kiosks in grocery and department stores (Kroger, Target, Meijer,to name a few), sandwhiches.

Carrying a Starbucks cup around is used as a status symbol to some. Starbucks hasn’t been the only one cheapening the experience, it’s the new “clientele” who don’t really love coffee at all! I love what Tom Hank’s character says in You’ve Got Mail:

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino!”

What made Starbucks appealing, in my opinion, is the atmosphere which Schultz describes in his book! I don’t mind waiting a few extra minutes for an espresso if it’s done right. I prefer to walk in and enjoy the atmosphere of Starbucks (music, aroma, etc.) without sitting through the drive-thru. I love the smell of roasted coffee beans (because my mom was practically a coffee addict when I was growing up). It’s a great “third place” to meet friends and talk!

To me, the new Starbucks stores don’t have that, and I think Schultz touches on this in an internal memo he sent to the rank-and-file at the company (you can read that here).

Well, that’s “The Way I See It…” To read more about Starbucks, here are some good starting points:

• Wikipedia: Starbucks
• Wikipedia: Howard Schultz
• Amazon.com: Pour Your Heart Into It
• Starbucks Gossip blog
• BusinessWeek: How to Reenergize Starbucks

Back in 1995, long before Facebook and MySpace, a site called Classmates.com popped up… it was one of the first “social networking” sites. Sure, places existed on the internet to connect (chat rooms, message boards, reunion sites), but Classmates.com made it easy.I signed up for Classmates.com around the year 2000 before I graduated college. Since I didn’t have Facebook or MySpace, it was a great way to see what my friends were up to, unfortunately, to see any real information or make contact, you have to pay. Unfortunately, Classmates.com hasn’t evolved with the times. I am now more connected to my friends in Facebook than I am in Classmates.com.If you look through Facebook, you may notice that the Class of 2001 going forward to today are heavy users of Facebook, while the pre-2001 classes don’t typically have Facebook because it wasn’t around when they were in college (or they were one of the select schools to be on the Facebook platform prior to 2001).

It looks like it’s the end for computer chain CompUSA as they begin liquidating their assets. I can’t say that I’m really too sad about it. Ever since Best Buy and Circuit City rolled into town, consumers became less interested in CompUSA. For me personally, CompUSA served a niche in town when I needed computer parts, but that all changed when Fry’s Electronics moved into town… and I have to say that I LOVE shopping at Fry’s. CompUSA failed to stay competitive with price and selection.

So my friend Jake and I walked into CompUSA and I kind of felt bad… all of these people are having to work and see the remains of their store be sold off. They are trying to sell EVERYTHING, including store equipment, lockers, shelving. It’s too bad that CompUSA couldn’t change their business model around a bit to lure more customers. I personally stopped shopping there because most everything was more than I was willing to pay.

Having worked in retail, I wish all the CompUSA the best of luck with finding future employment.

We were awakened this morning to a nice scene of snow. I guess we had it coming when my friend Noah was complaining last week, “why is it so cold and there’s no snow?” I just laughed at him… but today we got snow! I was driving home from class yesterday, saw the highway trucks salting the roads and I was thinking to myself, “wow, either they’re overreacting or it’s really going to snow!” Needless to say, I was not disappointed this morning. A few people on the roads apparently lost their common sense, as a past a few cars off the side of the road, but as the day as progressed, the sun has melted the snow and ice off of most roadways.

While I’m sitting here in Clay Terrace, I might as well comment about the story of citizens complaining about the displays at Victoria’s Secret. From a Christian standpoint, I can definitely understand why people would be concerned. I just hope that these people haven’t been giving the local staff a hard time, after all, their corporate office decides what to display in the windows. But let’s see this for what it really is, it’s just underwear people! The woman behind the complaint even complained when they changed the mannequins to pajamas claiming it was “too suggestive.”

Well ma’am, I have some advice for you. Now is a good time to educate your children about what you feel is appropriate and inappropriate. As much as we’d love to shelter our children from the less-than-desirable things in this world, it is important that we educate rather than shelter them. As a consumer, you also have the choice not to shop there. And if you really want to prevent your kids from looking, walk them to the other side of the street. Honestly, I remember that Indianapolis had a Fredrick’s of Hollywood (which is more risque than VS) store at one point and time. When we’d have to walk by it, my mom would make us cover our eyes and we would giggle… like little boys do when things are funny or awkward.

Well, that’s just my two-cents. It’s time for me to pack up and head back to the office. What do you think about this topic? Do you care? Do store displays offend you?

Now before you attack me, I don’t share my music. I’m pretty protective of that. But when I pay for music, I want to OWN my music, not just have a license to listen to it… which is essentially what DRM does. And with iTunes, they’re making the blatant assumption that they will always be your digitial music player and provider. So when you buy tracks through iTunes, you can only listen to them through iTunes.

Sites like AllofMp3.com popped up which sold DRM-free tracks and showed the recording industry that people were willing to pay for music as long as they didn’t have restrictions placed on them, which is why I’m excited to see a service such as Amazon’s MP3 download service.

To find the Amazon MP3 download service, locate the part of the menu that says “Digital Downloads” and then select “MP3 Downloads.” That’s it! You now have access to a catalog of music that is DRM-free, you get the MP3 file and it imports it into your favorite music player (even iTunes). You do have to download a small piece of software, a download manager, but it’s small and unobtrusive.

What’s the downside to this service? Well, unfortunately the selection isn’t nearly as good as iTunes. But as more record labels allow DRM-free music to be sold, the more music you’ll see show up on this service. I personally only downloaded two songs out of the possible five that I wanted because they didn’t have the artists I was looking for.

But if you’re looking for an alternative to iTunes, Amazon.com’s service is definitely worth a look. If you have an MP3 player (not an iPod) and listen to a ton of music, Rhapsody and Napster is a good alternative with unlimited music for your compatible device starting at $9.99. Of course once you cancel your subcription, you lose all your downloaded music.

Friendly Reminder:You should back-up songs that you download from services such as iTunes and Amazon.com, they aren’t responsible if you lose your files! Seriously, if you lost a CD, would you go back to the record store and ask them to give you another one? Nope, that’s what I thought!

It was mostly women… and they were grabbing all the DVDs on sale. Perhaps the busiest part of the store was the electronics as people were aiming to get whatever was on sale: DVD/TV combos, digital cameras, gaming systems, DVDs, if it was on sale, people were clamoring for it.

As for me? Well, I bought a couple of the DVDs that were on sale, but mostly went to buy some food. Now I will probably pop in one of those movies and rest for a while… dreaming of my first Black Friday experience. I hope my future wife doesn’t partake in this madness… I don’t want her to be one of those women that are normal 364 days out of the year and then goes crazy the day after Thanksgiving! Ha ha! Well, that’s all for now!

Unfortunately, the supermarket decided to close its video departments because of a waning interest and stiff competition from Blockbuster. In fact, my area used to have three video stores: Blockbuster, Video Vault of Nora, and the the supermarket’s video department. First the supermarket’s video department closed, then Video Vault decided to close their doors, and finally Blockbuster went out of business due to an organizational restructuring. Isn’t that nice? Blockbuster comes into the neighborhood, wipes out the competition, and then ends up leaving the neighborhood!

I say that to say this, Blockbuster is dead. In the days of video-on-demand, TiVo, Netflix, and the internet, we will not have a need for a brick-and-mortar video store. Here’s what we’re doing: the movie company digitally films the movie, burns that digital file to a disc, the discs are shipped to the store (in limited quantity), and we are forced to fight off the others for the lastest release.

Think about how we are able to do things with technology. The studios edit the films on computers, convert the file to a playable format (like Mp4 for iTunes) and can distribute it over the internet! You can see this at work in the iTunes Store. You can download a movie and watch it on your computer. Or, if you have Apple TV, you can stream the movie wirelessly from your computer to Apple TV.

This is just one application of how we deliver content. One of the most popular methods right now is pay-per-view or video on-demand. The cable/satellite company can take one or more copies of that movie file and distribute it to hundreds and thousands of customers at the same time. That’s right, no having to go out to the video store to find that the movie you want is out! You can order the movie in your underwear!

We’ve even seen DVD rental machines such as Redbox where you can rent a copy of a DVD for $1 a night using your credit or debit card. Redbox does have a few problems, it only features new releases, and there are only X amount of copies per machine. Second, you have to wait in line just to return a DVD if someone is using the machine. Third, some people will take FOREVER to pick their movie! Redbox is a good solution if you know what you want and are quick to get in and out.

So why is Blockbuster going to die? Stiff competition from these various avenues (video on-demand, Redbox, iTunes, Netflix) is taking away from Blockbuster’s business. If they stay around, they will be a ghost of their former glory. As customers become more technologically adept, we will see more demand for digital content delivered straight to our homes.

And what’s so bad about that? I can log on to the internet and watch movie trailers before ordering my movie! What can I do at a video store? Read the back of a box? Come on! The revolution is here and you’re seeing right before your eyes, with new players in the market, the video store as we know it is dead. So enjoy your local video store while you can because chances are they won’t be as widely available in 10 to 20 years.