In late April, Todd at ValuePlays posted his thoughts on the news that Starbucks would be introducing smoothies this summer. Smoothies would not be a bad idea if they were reasonably priced below $4 a drink.
Well, here’s a news release with the pricing details, flavors, nutrition info, and name of the new smoothies:
(Crain’s) — Starbucks Corp. plans to introduce a new line of smoothies Tuesday called Vivanno.
The drinks are the latest push by Starbucks CEO and founder Howard Schultz to boost sluggish sales at the Seattle-based coffee chain. The smoothies illustrate Starbuck’s strategy of offering more healthy options to attract new customers. The 16-oz smoothies will sell for $3.75 to $3.95, and initially will feature two flavors: orange mango banana and banana chocolate.
The drinks will include a banana, whey protein and Naked juice. The orange mango banana blend will have 250 calories, 16 grams of protein and 2 grams of fat. The banana chocolate blend will have 270 calories, 21 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat.
The new drinks debut tomorrow. Good luck, Starbucks.
Over at the Freakonomics blog is a mention of a book by Cornell economics professor Robert Frank entitled The Economic Naturalist. The book is a compilation real-world economics questions along with answers. Here is one of the interesting questions along with answer:
Why do fast food places promise a free meal if you aren’t given a receipt at the time of purchase?
To deter theft, owners of restaurants and other retail establishments require cashiers to reconcile the total amount of cash collected during their shift with the total volume of sales rung up at their register … One way cashiers can circumvent this control is by neglecting to ring up a proportion of their transactions … Thus if a cashier failed to ring up a customer’s $20 meal, he or she could pocket the $20 without creating an accounting discrepancy … By offering a complimentary meal to anyone who fails to receive a receipt, owners provide an economic incentive for customers to monitor cashiers for free.
I was totally unaware that some fast food places will give a free meal if you don’t get a receipt. I also think it’s cool that this economic incentive actually works.
