The future of retail. Starbucks has cleverly packaged an invaluable and inexhaustible resource (culture) with an everyday commodity (coffee). You provide the former, and pay a premium for the latter.

unless otherwise specified refers to the Starbucks incarnation on Main Street in Andover, Massachusetts, which used to be a Coffee Connection. Before it was the Coffee Connection it was Ford's Coffee Shop but Stella and Tom (the Ford's owners) retired and couldn't get their kids to take over the business.

Starbucks is the world's largest multinational chain of coffee shops.http://www.hoovers.com/starbucks/--ID__15745--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml Hoovers.com. URL last accessed September 5, 2006.http://www.findbyclick.com/stats List of all Starbucks stores in United States. URL last accessed January 17, 2007.

a couple of blocks away to keep you pumped the morning after late-night carousing

a place where people of all walks of life can come together on equal terms