For coffee, Peet’s for me. Better coffee, fewer people (at least in Evanston), and for us in the Midwest, a wistful San Fran ambiance at the height of winter.
Apparently, Zagat‘s readers disagree rating even Dunkin Donuts over Peet’s. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight solves the mystery: Zagat’s counts an “abstain” vote for Peet’s as a “zero” rating from a 0-3 rating scale. What happens in a binary election where abstainers are eliminated?
I wish Peet’s had the Greek yogurt I get from Starbucks. Then, I would face no dilemma in the morning.
Cheap Talk 
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June 10, 2009 at 7:27 am
-pll
Considering Peet’s has much fewer stores than Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts (2 in Illinois and 6 in Massachusetts, for example, for a total of 188 versus more than 10,000 for Starbucks), third place is a great spot. By the way, the top three matches exactly the ranking of the three top companies by market share for specialty coffee (Starbucks has 32% of the market, Dunkin Donuts 11% and Peet’s has 8% according to IRI data cited in a Peet’s investor presentation).
June 10, 2009 at 7:35 am
sandeep
Yes, 538 suggests adjusting for number of stores in some way.
June 10, 2009 at 7:37 am
-pll
Oops. Just read the Nate Silver entry and he does discuss the number of customers issue, which I approximated by the number of stores. By the way, the 11,000 figure includes stores outside the US — their annual report has a bar chart with the total number of stores and you need to eyeball how many are in the US.
June 10, 2009 at 10:53 am
sandeep
nate silver is pretty smart.