Addictive Dessert is Back

The supply chain kink has been ironed out. Reduced fat chocolate chip banana coffee cake was back in the Pacific NW today. And it was goooood.

The Last Hockey Game of the Year

I don't get goosebumps often, but Game 6 of the NHL Finals in Edmonton was one of the most amazing sports-on-TV experiences I've ever had. Maybe some World Cup soccer games are louder, but probably not. That arena was ridiculous. It seriously makes me wonder why Detroit fans suck so much. Not the 1.2MM fans that show up for the parade after we win the Cup; the 20,000 that have season tickets. If any Joe Louis Arena season ticket holder saw Game 6, please take it as a lesson. But I digress.

So, Game 7. The 3rd Game 7 in a row in the Finals. 6 different teams in those 3 games. Parity, or whatever. I was watching on both CBC and NBC, so I got the best of both worlds - dialogue between Emrick and Davidson on the US side, and classic old announcing plus Don Cherry on the Canada side.

During the national anthems (not shown on NBC I presume), the Canes looked really nervous, and the Oilers looked really ready to go. But that didn't happen; Carolina came out hitting the shit out of them, forcing turnovers, and getting a goal off a rebound just a few minutes in. At one point in the 1st, they were outhitting Edmonton 15-2. MacTavish played the matchups brilliantly, given that he didn't have the advantage of last change - saved Pronger and Smith for the A-Line with Cole and Brind'Amour.

The non-penalty shot was a great call. I was really glad to see that NBC got the Head of Officials, Stephen Walkcom, in the booth during the intermission to explain that to everyone. Maybe they aren't getting the ratings, but they're doing the little things right during the telecast.

Ales Hemsky came as close as one player can to costing his team the game today, and no one seemed to notice. He turned the puck over trying to complete individual rushes on 3 power plays and one 5-on-5, and 3/4 of those turned into trouble. Just when it looked like the Oilers were going to get a shot in their 2nd period 5-on-3, Hemsky gave the puck away and forced Ryan Smyth to take a penalty for tripping. As far as I know, he didn't even get a talking-to. If Brind'Amour hadn't hit the post when Hemske let him go free to the net, it would have been 100% worse.

The save by Markkenen on Mark Recchi in the 2nd on that 2-on-1 was probably the best of the game (not the series - that honor goes to Cam Ward for the 3-on-1 save in Game 6). He kept them in it when they were getting outplayed, and I would say that the 2nd goal was a bad break...you try to ice it on a PK, it takes a strange bounce, and you've got no one to take the open guy...then the shot hits your defenseman in the ass and goes in. It was just one of those nights where the Oilers were one step off, one hit away, one faceoff away. In some of those games, most notably against the Michigan team they played in the first round, they got the bounces, but not tonight in North Raleigh.

During the 2nd, Harry Neale said that "it doesn't matter how you feel - the cow still needs to be milked." That was really funny.

After the Oilers failed on the 5-on-3, the pace of the game slowed for a while, until they got that goal to make it 2-1. The 3rd was just awesome end to end hockey, and McCreary and Watson put their whistles away and let the players have at it. The Oilers got one more power play when Hedican got a strange penalty with 7:22 left, but nothing was doing.

Want to know how to execute a PP? Get the film from this game and watch the team in red do it. Wow. Speed, position, shot blocking, trading matchups, the whole deal. Perfection, today.

So, all in all, Detroit didn't lose to the Champs, but they lost to an amazingly determined team. And my last hometown prior to SF has a champion. I wish I could be with all those kids I coached to see how excited they are to have THE Stanley Cup champs...as locals, as coaches, as dads. They'll remember, in 20 years, the time they were 8 years old and their team won the first Cup in its history, the same way that Oilers fans remember 1984. So cool.

Second Week...

The flight back from Detroit was pretty good on Sunday. I had no idea how tired I was after a Friday red-eye and not sleeping much during my first week, so I slept pretty much the whole way home. I woke up in time to take a couple cool shots of the sun setting behind the San Juan Islands and Seattle. For those who haven' t been up to Seattle -- both of these photos look West/Northwest. In the picture on top, you can make out the city skyline on the middle peninsula. The bridge on the left (South) side of the photo is Interstate 90, and the one on the right (North) side is Rt. 520. 520 is the main artery from Seattle to Redmond (where Microsoft is based), and the 90 is what I take each day from Bellevue (too far East to see in the photo, but barely). The island you can see on the close side of the bridges is Mercer Island, where lots of the Hebrews live.

At Starbucks, the Board was meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, so the 7th floor was abuzz with activity most of those days. I got to try Fall's new frappucino (those of you in Detroit know what this will be because of the market testing going on there...but I have to remain silent) and a bevy of cool stuff left over from the meetings. I was hoping to run into Bill Bradley (one of the directors) in the bathroom to ask him about either his Olympic medals, his NBA titles, his work with McKinsey, or his time as a Senator, but it turned out that he and I never had to pee at the same time.

Speaking of cool directors, there is a 36-year old woman named Melody Hobson on the Board. She is an asset manager in Chicago for a value shop who seems to have a really good business ethic. She and Howard Schultz share a directorship on the board of another company, so that may be how they met, but I remember being really impressed the first time I heard someone so young was on such a distinctive Board. The Wall Street Journal named Melody one of its "Women to Watch" back in 2004, and it looks like she's living up to that.

I ran into Jim, the CEO, again this week. He came into the kitchen for a drink during the meeting while I was there making my daily short nonfat, no-whip black & white mocha. He abruptly asked me what I'd learned since I saw him last, and I whittled off something about how my key cross-functional contacts would be in market research and finance. He seemed satisfied, because he nodded and walked off. From all I've heard about him, I wouldn't be surprised if he emailed my finance and market research contacts to make sure I do good work with them. People think the guy is cloned around the building, because he always seems to be popping up in meetings and responding to random personal emails within a few minutes.

I got some more traction on my projects, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Soon I will be leading my first coffee tasting. The other Category interns started this week, and I moved into an office that I am sharing with all 4 of them. We decorated it with Banana promotion stuff and older things that the Creative group could give us, so it's not a sterile white room like it was when we first moved in. I also have a phone, a computer, a docking station, an internet connection, and an ID badge. Sounds trivial, but the first week was an admin nightmare. Oh, and I got paid, too. Stoked.

The demand for my favorite reduced fat banana chocolate chip coffee cake led to shortages in supply from the baker in San Antonio who makes them for Starbucks, so some regions have been out of the dessert lately...including Seattle...it has been hard to go without it! The 30% partner discount sure makes Starbucks a lot more affordable. Sunday, I got my first "markout" - free weekly 1 pound bag of coffee. I got French Roast from the store over on Lake Washington.

Summer 2 coffee comes out soon...keep an eye out...it is going to be damn good.

I am more and more impressed with the people here as I get to know more of them. I'm now working in depth with finance and the strategy group, and I'll be working a lot with marketing research soon to do some customer outreach. I get to be on the phone with store partners many times during the week, which teaches me so much about the business of retail. I can now also commit to a predictable schedule since the Stanley Cup Playoffs are over and I don't need to be in front of a TV at 5:00 Pacific time.

Until next week...

First Week at Starbucks

So...I haven't posted in a while, but my goal is to put up an update once a week while I'm at Starbucks for the summer. I am a summer intern in the Coffee Category at Starbucks, where I'm working with a fabulous team on a couple of interesting projects.

Tate and I road-tripped up from San Diego to Seattle the week before Memorial Day so that we could catch some ballgames and get my car up here. My first day was June 5, and to start things off, there was a half-day orientation for new Partner Interns (Partners = Employees). The other Category interns (in groups like Espresso, Food, Blended Drinks, and Merchandise) don't start until 6/12, but there were a number of interns who were starting in CPG, Strategy, Retail Finance, Supply Chain, Store Development, Real Estate, and a couple other areas. Including undergraduates, the company is employing almost 70 interns - 5 in the "core" business of Category Management.

Also as part of the training, I underwent the first of 3 sessions required to obtain "Coffee Master" status. This is the status afforded to those who are truly knowledgeable about coffee - you can recognize Coffee Masters in the stores by their black (vs. traditional green) aprons. One of my goals is to become a Coffee Master by the end of the summer, which all of my colleagues assure me is attainable if I work at it.

So far I've "tasted" (the formal process can be daunting, but fun) 4 different coffees. Soon I'll get to lead a tasting for my department, by brewing coffee in a french press and serving it to 5-8 others and collecting everyone's opinions on the flavor.

For the rest of Monday, I spent time filling out the new hire paperwork and getting to know members of my team. My director is Kim Malek, who's been at Starbucks for 7 years. I love the team - they have spent varying amounts of time with the company, and are a blast to work with. The culture at Starbucks is really collaborative - to a fault, some believe, but it's refreshing for many Partners who have worked in very traditional businesses to come here and be in a more entrepreneurial, team-based environment.

On Tuesday, I continued to have a number of 1:1 meetings with folks from the cross-functional team I'll be working with this summer. I'll be working directly with Partners in marketing, supply chain, creative, operations, and other areas - which is much more of a macro experience than I had in consulting. It's important to build solid relationships and really understand what makes people tick so that the work experience is good for everyone on the team.

On Wednesday, the Category groups had an informal 2-hour sit-down with Jim Donald, the CEO. I got a bit of 1:1 time with him, enough to recognize the sincerity of his messages. He talked a lot in the meetings about the key strategic initiatives of the next 5 years, and took some tough questions about Health/Wellness, the company's presence in media, and even the food in the cafeteria. It was nice to hear him say that family and personal lives have to come first in order to be an effective contributor to the Partner team.

By the end of the week, I started to understand more about my core project. I can't say too much about the specifics, but I can say that it relates to Whole Bean (bagged) coffees in the Starbucks stores. It's something that the team has wanted to look at for a while, but hasn't had the chance to until this point.

The weather in Seattle is starting to break, though most of the days have been mid-60s so far. There are a couple other interns here from Haas, the intern team from Starbucks is great, Elisa is back home working for the Gates Foundation, and I'm living with her parents, so the personal situation is just fine. Amy and I are going back to Toledo for a wedding this weekend. I love red-eye flights...