Want to gauge the national mood? Look at coffee sales

[image credit: geekwire.com]

Public sentiment is very difficult to assess

Policymakers, economists, and businesses are constantly looking for better ways to assess the general public well-being and sentiment, but the standard measures like GDP are lagging and imprecise.

Solution: Look at incidental, daily recreational expenses

For real insights into the American mindset, you need daily data from Starbucks stores.

Starbucks-finalHoward Schultz sees those numbers four times a day, and despite Starbucks’ strong financial results, the underlying patterns demonstrate a “fractured level of trust and confidence” in the country’s leadership.

Sales will rise and fall with the national mood, tanking quickly during events like the New York City police ­protests—or the 2013 government shutdown, just one of the recent moments when ­Schultz has worried about the effects of partisan politics on the economy. “I called the White House after the government shutdown and shared with them [figures showing] that leading into the shutdown and for weeks afterward, we saw a significant drop in consumer spending.” He spoke to people “at the very highest level on both sides of the aisle” to stress his feeling that this effect would be “lingering” and would result in a more skittish consumer. “And that’s exactly what’s happened,” he says.

Read More

• geekwire.com | What Starbucks’ data tells Howard Schultz about the national mood