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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Starbucks has asked its customers for suggestions on how to improve its drinks, customer service and all-around business at the Seattle company. And they've responded, according to the Associated Press, by the hundreds.
Here's an excerpt from the AP story:
Create a punch-card system with a free drink after so many purchases. Give people a free cup of birthday joe or discounts for using their own mugs. Let customers forgo long lines by ordering their usual with the swipe of a card when they walk in the door.
Skeptics have panned MyStarbucksIdea.com, unveiled at the company's heavily attended annual meeting in mid-March, as an online suggestion box that's already grown stale. But the heavy traffic it's drawn and the message Starbucks is sending — that it's listening, and listening carefully — have impressed corporate marketing experts.
"Most brands do not put out a welcome mat for feedback," said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of strategic services for the market research firm Nielsen Online. "Generally feedback is viewed as a cost of doing business rather than an opportunity. Starbucks is saying this is an opportunity."
Before it went live, Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks' chief information officer, said he was hoping a few hundred ideas would trickle in the first few days.
About 300 suggestions were posted in the first hour after the shareholders meeting, which drew a crowd of 6,000 and was closely watched by Wall Street analysts hungry for details on the company's turnaround plans.
Any ideas of your own? (You'll need a Starbucks.com account to participate at MyStarbucksIdea.com) Do you think a loyalty program giving regulars free drinks after so many purchased -- as so many espresso bars do -- would make a difference? One suggestion I saw addressed discounts for bringing your own mug, something I thought Starbucks already did.
