Vocabulary from the Reading

Ambiance	Mediocre
Benchmark	On-site
Entrust	Pique …curiosity
Fanatical	Respite
Go to great length	Subliminal message
Imbue …with	Trigger
Time-out

Read the sentences and fill in with an appropriate form of one of the expressions. Check your answers against those of a colleague.

1. Schultz says that the Starbucks company is ___________________ about buying the highest-quality Arabica coffees in the world. Employees put extraordinary effort into seeking and finding the best.

2. High-quality coffee is Starbucks’ standard, or _____________________. Everything else has to be as good.

3. In Starbucks stores, employees __________________________ to ensure that the coffee is fresh and flavorful. For example, beans are carefully kept away from air, light, and moisture.

4. American coffee has been _________________________ for years; Starbucks wants to change our expectations. Starbucks believes that Americans can and should get the best coffee possible.

5. In a real sense, the company its baristas with the brand. Their attitude and behavior determines what people think of the product.

6. In barista training, the Starbucks employees not only learn about coffee, they learn about Starbucks corporate culture. The whole process ___________them __________________Starbucks values: a passion for quality coffee and for quality service.

7. The trainers are all managers who have worked in Starbucks stores themselves. In other words, they don’t simply know about the business from books; they have had firsthand, ___________________________________ experience.

8. Schultz realizes that customers are looking for a Third Place, a place that offers a(n) _________________from the pressures of work and home. You might say they want a break, or ________________________, in the day, a little personal treat.

9. The Starbucks brand is created by the _________________ in the stores, so each store is designed to romance the senses and reinforce the feeling, or ______________________, that everything is high-quality.

10. The pleasant smell, or aroma, of coffee _________________strong memories and feelings, even more than other senses. Thus, coffee aroma plays a major role in attracting people to Starbucks stores.

11. Store design is also created to get people interested in the art and science of coffee, to ___________________________their _________________about where coffee comes from, how its grown, the roasting process, and so on.

LANGUAGE STUDY

IDIOMS

Use the vocabulary from this list to replace the underlined phrases in the sentences below.

to be hard to swallow a backlash against

to blow smoke (related to “smoke and mirrors”) to be off-base

to be drinking the Kool Aid to homogenize

to be bent on doing something a sleight of hand

1. That story about Starbucks having a corporate conscience seems untrue to me.

2. The employees are so eager to tell you how wonderful it is to work at Starbucks makes it sound like everyone is part of a religious cult and will do whatever the leader says.

3. When chains become global, people worry that the world is becoming too similar.

4. In situations where people feel traditional firms in their country are being threatened by global brands, there is often a negative reaction against the brand. McDonald's and Starbucks have both suffered from such reactions.

5. Starbucks is determined to open 20,000 more stores in the next few years.

5. Unlike Enron’s rapid growth, that of Starbucks has required no financial trickery; Starbucks started small and grew exponentially, but it has always been clear how and why Starbucks was making its money.

5. Nevertheless, when Starbucks began to expand, even Howard Shultz's father-in-law thought he was deceiving himself and others.

5. Anyone who thinks Howard Schultz will abandon his commitment to health care for his employees is completely wrong.