At the time when a barista in Starbucks is making close to $20 in tips per shift, bikini barista girls at Cowgirls Espresso coffee earn $700 (watch video on their website). I wonder if the  strippers are making that much (someone told me, on average its $500 per night).

I know the idea is not new, sex sells blah, blah, blan.. Restaurants (Hooters) were doing that for years (not to the such extent, but very close). Still coffee shops are very different from restaurants and bars. Children don’t drink beer and they don’t go to the bars, but they love their frappes and they sure love going to the coffee shops. Now, if parents can put a child protection on their TVs and prohibit their kids from watching adult channels can they stop their kids (more boys than girls) from going down to the nearest bikini coffee shop and watch live what they can not see on TV ?

Recently a few bikini-barista girls were charged with prostitution. Were they real prostitutes before they started working in the bikini coffee shop? I think this is an important question. What if they were not and they turned to prostitution because they moral principles has changed on the job? That is possible.

Is it socially responsible to let the coffee businesses of such nature grow and flourish? Does the society want to promote the idea that if sex sells it can be applied to anything. What is next in this case? It’s plain simple that anything with “skin” element will get additional interest from the male public. But would you like to live in the world with nude ramen, sexy burgers and naked ice cream shops? Would you like to live in the world where girls want to become bikini barista when they grow up? After all, they are not prostitutes, not strippers, they are just baristas…

U.S. coffee shop giant Starbucks Corp. plans major expansion in Germany, CEO Howard Schultz said in an interview with a German newspaper published on Thursday.

The number of German coffee shops will be “doubled or tripled” in coming years, he told German daily Handelsblatt.

Starbucks’ German presence is relatively modest although Germany is one of the world’s leading coffee drinking countries.

Starbucks has only 150 German coffee shops against 180 in Manhattan alone and a 17,000 branch global network, the report said.

Starbucks is considering more local purchases of bakery products and other food in Germany closer to local tastes, Schultz told the newspaper. Details would be given in the coming 12 months.

Starbucks, which generates about 20 percent of its revenues from international markets, in July announced a reorganization to achieve its goals of generating half of revenues outside the U.S.

Asked by Handelsblatt about the state of Starbucks’ European business, Schultz said: “Our business in Europe is still relatively healthy. In Germany the business is running good.”

“But we can see very well that the world is currently very fragile and we are considering very carefully where and how we expand.”