On Thursday afternoon, coffee king Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) will report third-quarter earnings. Currently, expectations call for a profit of 21 cents per share on revenue of $2.39 billion. A year ago, SBUX earned a penny per share in the third quarter, with revenue checking in at $2.52 billion. Fundamentally, SBUX has undertaken a number of cost-cutting measures included closing stores and cutting the prices on some of the company's easier-made beverages (this move was countered by raising the prices on some of SBUX's "more complicated beverages"). Worker layoffs have also had an impact on the company's bottom line. As for good news, SBUX announced that is going to keep 27 stores open that it had originally targeted for closing. This move was made after the firm reviewed its finances. I have long criticized SBUX for its spend-happy ways, but it seems that the company is trying to tame these tendencies. This does not mean that the firm doesn't still spend money loosely, but it is a start.

Starbucks, were the company to own up to the history of coffee, owes its origins -- not to the cafes of Italy where Howard Schultz drank the future -- but the coffeehouse culture of Central Europe. It wasn't as glamorous in the 80s and 90s to admit it, perhaps, and certainly there was no culture, coffeeshop or otherwise, to be had until McDonald's opened in Warsaw in the early 1990s.

Ironically, then, the Polish youth are embracing the newly-opened Starbucks cafes. Washington Post op-ed columnist Anne Applebaum is in Warsaw, and says that the new Starbucks there are met with open wallets and customers eager to buy the expensive brew and flaunt it, with "the famous green label facing outward."

When Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) brought back founder Howard Schultz to revitalize the company's image, product line and customer experience, the coffee chain's edge had disappeared. It had lost customers, revenue, the niche and most important -- the overall experience -- to newer competitors. That was not to say Starbucks still was not king, but it become diluted in the race for newer growth.

Well, to heck with that. Schultz slowed down growth after re-emerging as the company's CEO early this year, deleted breakfast sandwiches from the menu, retrained the company's baristas and ensured that fresh-ground coffee smells were the number one priority for every customer coming in the door to experience. But Schultz isn't stopping there. He also wants customers to push back to the company using MyStarbucksIdea.com. In other words, the coffeehouse's own social networking site. Schultz wants to empower his customers to help shape the future direction of the coffeehouse he founded.

This is more than a blog or a forum -- customers can discuss ideas, argue about them, post new ideas, vote on ideas and form more opinions on improving the Starbucks experience. Well, I though this was exactly what Schultz was busy doing these days? Is he really interested in what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks?

Will customers really give him all this feedback? I'm skeptical. I agree that balancing the customer's needs and the business's needs is critical -- one can't overpower the other. Still, will this even have an effect on Starbucks at all? If it really is this interested, it needs to market the MyStarbucksIdea website just as much as its mocha lattes. Give every customer notice that they can have a voice in this.

I was drawn to a story in my local paper about New Hope Community Church outside Portland, Oregon -- two of my sisters have attended services there regularly, and it's a landmark in the metropolitan area. But what struck me as culture-changing was a quote from the developer who's working with church leadership. He has one goal as he plans an entirely new church-centered commercial complex: "We hope this will be a Starbucks experience from one end to the other."

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) has a funny relationship with God; after all, the chain famously offended a woman so much she boycotted its coffee. So how is purchasing and drinking a caffeinated beverage in a Starbucks outlet similar to going to church? Part of it is about the audience; churches (at least in my hometown) have moved away from the formal experience in which the members of the congregation are simply watching a show put on by the "cast" of the church, and toward more interactive experiences in which small groups, focused around common interests, meet to discuss Bible passages or work together on a project -- from feeding the hungry to overcoming addiction. The parallels in retail? Yep, less convention center, more coffee shop.

This is where Starbucks comes in.

As a warning, I'm one of the .0354% of Americans who have never ordered anything at Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX). Maybe it's the fact that I find the whole idea of a chain of "neighborhood coffee shops" with jazz music and local art a little tacky. Perhaps it's the personal finance writer and penny-pincher in me that doesn't want to spend that amount of money for a cup of coffee. So be warned: I've met people to talk in Starbucks several times but I've never actually bought anything there. When I write about Starbucks, I do so from the perspective of a skeptical non-customer rather than that of a latte-sipping fan.

Starbucks currently charges $6 an hour for in-store access to the Internet through AT&T's T-mobile service, compared to McDonald's which charges $2.95, and Panera, which will let you go on for free. This raises a question: Is Starbucks making itself less competitive by charging for the Internet, or is Panera stupid to give away a service people would gladly pay for (as evidenced by the large crowds at Starbucks)? From a business perspective I think makes sense to charge, if only to keep tables from being taken up by people who buy one cup of coffee and then freeload on the Internet access for two hours (or am I the only person who would actually do that?).

Do you mind paying for Internet access in restaurants? Would you be more likely to frequent a cafe that lets you on for free?

In my hometown of Portland, Ore., Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) is seen as the interloper, even though the company's headquarters are only a few hours' drive away. Starbucks gets none of the important descriptors. It's not "local." It's not "independent." And it's very, very not "hippie."

Coffee People, on the other hand, has historically received all of those storied monikers. Founded in 1970s as a booth in Eugene, Oregon's Saturday Market (oh you have never known hippy until you've known the Eugene Saturday Market), the owners burst in the coffeeshop scene in 1983 with a store in the very center of hippy Portland hip-ville, NW 23rd Avenue. When I was a teenager, Coffee People was a mecca of caffeine and I, too, sipped Black Tiger milkshakes (full of ground-up chocolate-covered coffee beans) and munched on Hippie Cookies.

In 1999, Diedrich Coffee Inc. bought Coffee People and the hippiness slowly began to drain away. Quality diminished and the chains lost much of their verve. On Thursday, Starbucks announced it had purchased every last one of the Coffee People retail stores, 40 total and 15 in Portland, for $13.5 million. Deidrich is exiting the company-owned retail business entirely, but will retain the Coffee People brand names, including Black Tiger espresso, its Gloria Jean's Coffee brand, and the franchising arm of 168 retail locations.

As it has with so many other acquisitions, Starbucks plans to conduct rapid-fire conversion, keeping all 40 locations open even though it will mean a bit of cannibalization in some neighborhoods. Coffee People stores will be converted to Starbucks in a few months' time and the hippieness will be lost forever. Good thing Coffee People founder Jim Roberts is still hippy-happening at the little Jim & Patty's Coffee in NE Portland. Will Starbucks soon own every single chain coffee store in the U.S.? It seems not a bit unlikely. And the very antithesis of hippie.