Jamba Juice, Shareholder Meeting

One of the benefits of living in California is that many popular companies are based in the Bay Area. I enjoy attending annual shareholder meetings, and the Peet's meeting this year was wonderful. While Peet's is based in Emeryville, CA, the meeting took place at the new roasting facility across the beautiful Oakland Bay. I spoke with the Chairman who told me about Peet's history (Peet's first store was in Berkeley, but Peet's was originally Starbucks and then sold the first few stores in Washington state to "some guy named Howard Schultz," as the Chairman explained, with a smile).

Jamba Juice's annual meeting--its very first one--also took place in Oakland, at the Marriott City Center near Chinatown. The Chairman was impressive to listen to, but the other speakers seemed more focused on marketing than the nuts and bolts of running a business. In an industry where location is everything, Peet's and Starbucks are snapping up almost all the great locations. For example, Peet's just opened new stores in Morgan Hill and downtown San Jose. Those could have been Jamba store locations. Unless Jamba intends on selling its product over the Internet or solely in stores, it needs to focus on locations and favorable lease terms to increase revenue. I was disappointed that the company does not purchase any futures contracts, but a corporate officer explained that the primary product they use was strawberries, and no futures market exists for that ingredient. He also explained to me that Jamba Juice tends to favor suburban locations rather than business-centric, downtown locations because suburbia offers seven-day-a-week foot traffic, whereas business districts are typically ghost towns on weekends.

Some other interesting notes: Jamba is focusing on opening kiosks in airports and perhaps also having drive-thrus. They seem to be shying away from a heavy physical presence, perhaps because of high rents--especially closer to the more residential areas in Washington and California, where strip mall rents are much higher than average. But why go public if the money raised will not be used to increase a physical presence? A private company can just as easily enter into partnerships and devise marketing plans.

The Chairman stated that he has received many offers to open stores internationally but he was being cautious about opening abroad because he wanted to carefully control the brand's image. Another speaker dropped an interesting tidbit about Jamba partnering with another major player to sell beverages in stores. If Jamba partners with Coca-Cola, which has been increasing its non-soda portfolio of assets, most recently with Caribou Coffee, then perhaps the stock will experience a short term boost.

Most disappointing was that Jamba did not offer any of their products at the meeting. For a first time meeting, however, perhaps Jamba did better than most would have.

Julian Bond, American Hero

One of my heroes is Julian Bond. Someone once remarked not to have heroes because they will let you down. I suppose that's a recognition that any human being is fallible under certain circumstances, but I don't expect Julian Bond to ever let anyone down. I have never understood why Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton seem to be more famous than Julian Bond, who is more intelligent, more articulate, and more photogenic. It's almost as if the universe reserves the best among us for those who put a little effort into searching for the divine.

His commencement speech at Loyola University in New Orleans in 2007 was beautiful. I especially liked these lines:

"Don’t let the din of the dollar deafen you to the quiet desperation of the dispossessed. Don’t let the glare of greed blind you to the many in need. You must place interest in principle above interest on principal."

In our increasingly material world, Bond and other civil rights leaders remind us what is important. I first heard him speak at an ACLU dinner in San Jose. When I left, I was a changed man. I've heard Mike Wallace, Warren Buffett, Wesley Clark, Desmond Tutu, Steve Jobs, and even Dave Barry speak, but none of them had the impact that Bond had on me. His ability to be inspirational while calmly forceful creates a powerful impact on any listener. I have tried to imitate his style as much as possible, but I cannot replicate the hold he has over an audience. It's not just charisma--Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett have that in spades; it's not a particular kind of voice--Wesley Clark has a great voice; Bond just has something that makes you feel proud to be a human being.

The Innocent Man, by Grisham

I first dismissed this book because Grisham's fiction has never appealed to me. As an attorney, I've found that my daily working life interferes with the exciting premises I am asked to accept from legal fiction. As a result, I almost made the mistake of skipping _The Innocent Man_. Grisham's first nonfiction work about families in Oklahoma brought together by unfortunate circumstances will shake your faith in the justice system. I've read elsewhere that the Supreme Court at one point almost lost its collegiality because of a split in justices who refused to affirm any death penalty conviction as a matter of principle. This book provides some insight into what the Supreme Court during Thurgood Marshall's time must have been seeing to create that kind of schism.

Grisham begins by with a plot that could have come straight out of _Moneyball_--i.e., a talented kid from the Midwest with a powerful arm gets discovered by the A's and negotiates with prudent management for a decent signing bonus. When the bonus is sufficiently raised, Ron Williamson, brimming with confidence, chooses money/salary over a college education and a scholarship, but when he is injured, his entire life is then spent fighting for a spot in the minors. When the various stints in the minors fail, Ron goes into a destructive spiral and overzealous law enforcement connects him and his friend to a gruesome murder.

I've heard lawyers say that the criminal justice system favors the prosecution because everyone assumes the D.A. only brings cases where it is sure to convict. As a result, it is terribly easy to buy into the paradigm of Eliot Ness cops arresting violent miscreants, and more difficult to imagine a perfect storm of egotistical D.A.s and the forensic specialists who could be biased because they are on the same county or public payroll and work closely with law enforcement.

What was especially stunning to me was how much the prosecution used inherently unreliable hair samples. Even as an attorney, I did not know how unreliable some so-called scientific data was, and this book was a good education for me and exposed bias I did not even know I had. Overall, an excellent book, and one that is sure to make you question the criminal justice system without the typical pointing to race as a factor.

The Winner-Take-All Society, by R. Frank

This book basically says that the rat race is harmful and we should constrain spending, because happiness isn't really what we have, but what our neighbor has; therefore, by creating incentives to spend less, we can create a trickle-down effect of less consumption and have more time and less coarseness in culture. The only problem is that the authors--as bright as they are--do not spend much time explaining exactly how a consumption tax would work. One gets the feeling that they felt going into specific details was inappropriate for a mass-market book. Along the way, we also learn about fun variations on game theory, the predecessor to Paris Hilton, and some prescient warnings on steroids. Despite the negative comments about lawyers in the book, I enjoyed it very much. The author reminds his readers, through facts and research, to be more humble and to remember that because the number of top positions is few in the U.S., it cannot be the case that all our dreams will be realized. While depressing on the surface, one may wish the participants on American Idol had read this book before appearing on national television.

Disgrace, by Coetzee

This is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of a teacher, his daughter, and a family seeking justice for a terrible crime. Having read _Cry, the Beloved Country_, I was prepared for this novel to be good but average. South Africa's history lends itself well to deep, haunting fiction, but Mr. Coetzee's writing style is unique. For example, the language used here is stunning, such as inamorata; hypnagogic; jonquil; and verbena. These are not typical words one sees in any novel, but they are placed in a way that makes the entire book seem onomatopoetic, if that is possible. In addition, the characters' thoughts are delightful to see: at one point, the main character analyzes the word, "friend." It comes from freond, and then from freon, meaning love. In other words, a friend is literally a lover. Without divulging too much, _Disgrace_ absorbs the reader in an exciting plot while serving a cold dish of racial karma--it's the literary equivalent of being injected with botulin while happily dining at a Parisian restaurant. When you finish this story of a family in South Africa that has to deal with the changing demographics around it, if you understand the author's subtle point, you will view the world differently and hopefully more humanely.

The Prize, by Yergin

"Behind every great fortune is a great crime." The fortunes discussed here involve oil. Two of the most interesting figures are Rockefeller Sr., who is portrayed as a miserly monopolist; and Gulbenkian, an Armenian philosopher and consummate businessman. Yergin's delightful tome also covers world leaders from Eisenhower--who stopped the British from re-taking the Suez Canal post-Nasser--to the Shah, who replaced, then jailed, Mossadegh. Getty, the muckrackers, and other historical figures are also mentioned in detail.

A major historical omission Yergin makes is that he fails to note Kermit Roosevelt's possible role in Operation Ajax, which is discussed in Perkins' _Confessions of an Economic Hit Man_. Still, the scope of this book is incredible. We learn that oil was around one dollar a barrel in the 1940's (meaning our addiction to "black gold" is fairly new); that BP is the successor to the nationalized Anglo-Persian Oil Company; that U.S. and British policy wished to prevent Anglo-Persian's oil from falling into Communist hands, making the new millennium's current events especially interesting; that one possible reason we, rather than the British, have a special relationship with Saudi Arabia may involve FDR's superior knowledge of Middle Eastern culture, as well as FDR's polio; that at one point, Venezuela supplied 55% of the U.S.'s oil (In 2007, Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela supply most of the U.S.'s oil); that Leavittown gave rise to suburbs (fun quote from its founder: "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do."); and much more. This book should be required reading in every history classroom in America. It enlivens history with its detailed depictions of characters who changed the course of world history. It is around 800 pages in paperback, and is, without question, worth the time investment.

Gilead by M. Robinson

Robinson writes about a Midwestern preacher leaving a written legacy for his son. The novel takes place in 1956 and takes us inside the mind of a preacher with profound wisdom. While it sometimes comes across as an apologia and fireside chat, the content is so beautifully written that we feel privileged to listen to the words of Rev. John Ames.

Some nuggets from this book are too good not to be shared: "A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine. Above all, mind what you say. 'Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire.'"

Aside from advice, Robinson's language will soothe any reader: "The graveyard was about the loneliest place you could imagine. If I were to say it was going back to nature, you might get the idea there was some vitality about the place. But it was parched and sun-stricken. It was hard to imagine the grass had ever been green. Everywhere you stepped, little grasshoppers would fly up by the score, making that snap they do, like striking a match."

Rev. Ames' ability to be self-aware and also transfer his knowledge to us makes him a special character--few characters are written as self-aware, intelligent, and articulate. Knowing his son will spend most of his life fatherless, he writes, "You are drawing those terrible little pictures that you will bring me to admire, and which I will admire because I have not the heart to say one word that you might remember against me." In an age of attention-seeking, Rev. Ames reminds us that humility and quiet compassion still have much to teach this generation. The mere act of reading Robinson's novel will transport you into a slower, more gentle world.