When Starbucks recorded a not-amazing same-store sales increase of just 4% for June, compared to a more typical comparable-store increase of 6% in the previous month, those more-caffeinated investors all held our collective breath (it's a short breath, you know, coffee has a way of making one's heart race and one's breath come shallow and fast). As Michael Canfield pointed out: could this mean Starbucks had become mature? Or was it, as Starbucks management posited, simply the impatience factor: customers tired of waiting in line for banana coconut frappuccinos?

It's a long-subscribed-to axiom that you can't have both quality and quantity. And in my opinion, Starbucks' quantity has finally increased to the point that its quality is problematic. A local one-time Starbucks manager who recently opened his own coffeeshop told me that he shook his head when his employer switched from the authentic but sometimes difficult-to-manage mechanical espresso machines to the simple, fast, industrial push-button variety. As a coffee aficionado, one who's spent her share of time behind a coffee counter, I can attest: Starbucks lattes are no longer almost as good as the ones from Gladstone Coffee down the street (they serve up locally-roasted beans from the fabu La Marzocco machine).

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.