Wow!Wow!Wow!Where are we heading?

Last week Starbuck announced it will close all the USA stores for three hours on feb 28.
The reason? "To teach the baristas the art of making coffee".
With that announcement I felt vindicated by the king of them all.
Now I tell you why: As far as I can remember and especially since the introduction by Faema of the automatic frother in the mid eighties and subsequently the introduction of the superautomatic espresso machines I felt something was starting to be missing from the very fabric of this most sensational drink. Over the years giants companies especially swiss espresso machine manufacturers began telling customers to choose technology over people;
why train intelligent people to use conventional machines when you can
hire idiots to push a button and get the same result?
That philosophy failed to take into consideration the most important component in the all equation "The customer". Store owners (thought) failed to realize that the customer was going to be opposed to forking out 5 bucks for something that costs 25cents and was being delivered by an idiot at the push of a button. Over the years I have queried anybody who would want to hear my cappuccino philosophy. I got a wide spectrum of answers but never the one I was looking for, and when I spelled out
what I define a cappuccino "Cappuccino is nothing more than a cup of coffee with a romance" I got lots of approvals and smiles. Finally I guess Starbuck too came to realize that Domenic's philosophy was correct: most customers decided it was not worth paying 5bucks for a cup of coffee without the romance even though it was sold as Cappuccino.
Sorry Starbucks and all the others who thought likewise "Go back to basics"..

Domenic can help on this front