Summer of the Fruity Drinks

Competition is lively as snack-pushers like Starbucks (SBUX), Dunkin' Donuts, Cold Stone Creamery, and Jamba Juice roll out their new summer offerings in the way of fruit-flavored smoothies, blends and shakes:  Fruity Summer Drinks are a Tropical Paradise of Profit: AOL Money & Finance. To the popular coffee and tea-based Frappuccino, Starbucks has added blends based on pomegranate or tangerine. The coffee giant still has whipped-cream and syrups available to top yours, an option maybe not found at Jamba Juice, if you were worried that the new choices are not decadent enough.

Reuters reports SBUX is preparing to up noncoffee merchandise for holidays, a move consistent with this summer's strategy, and with the overall aim of the Starbucks Corporation to continually introduce new products and new ideas.  Starbucks does not just expand geographically, and those store shelves and menu boards are always threatening to explode from the sheer number of new kinds of, well, stuff, seemingly always being introduced: Board games, CD's, home brewing equipment -- some of it useful or interesting, some of it obscure and even puzzling.

Not all of it works, but I have to admire the energy and will that goes into the process. A company that is so committed to continually trying out new ideas has plenty of growing room on its horizon.