Caribou Coffee!

A couple weeks ago, I was hired to be a barista at the Caribou Coffee being built inside the Oakland road HyVee. What is Caribou Coffee? Well I'd love to tell you so I can get some words out for the sake of a blog post.  Caribou Coffee Company is the second largest in the United States after Starbucks. Caribou sells coffee, tea, and bakery foods in 415 coffeehouses in 16 states. In 1990, on a trip to Denali National Park in Alaska, Caribou Coffee was imagined by newlyweds John and Kim Puckett. The couple raised money to start the first Caribou Coffee shop in Edina, Minnesota, in 1992. After several years of mixed performance, the Pucketts sold the company in 1998 for $120 million to Crescent Capital, which has since changed its name to Arcapita.
Since opening, the chain has expanded to 415 locations in 16 states, making it the second-largest operator of non-franchised coffeehouses in the United States, after Starbucks Corporation.Caribou maintains its headquarters and coffee-roasting facility in the Minneapolis metropolitan area.
Arcapita was Caribou Coffee's majority shareholder. In 2002 Yusuf al-Qaradawi's involvement with the bank led to a protest of Caribou Coffee. That same year al-Qaradawi stepped down as chairman of the bank's Sharia board. I read about this on Scopes, people were creating controversy and protesting because the main shareholder was an Israeli. On the Scopes entry of the email, people were saying all sorts of things like "how can we trust this company?" It kind of horrified me that people think that just because this company was partially owned by someone from a certain country that it isn't to be trusted.On September 28, 2005, Caribou Coffee became a publicly traded company. In 2011, Arcapita sold their shares of Caribou Coffee. As of September 30, 2011 no one entity owns more than 8% of Caribou's outstanding shares. On February 28, 2010, Caribou announced a corporate-wide re-branding, and began using their new "coffee bean caribou" logo officially on March 1, 2010

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