Iranian brand theft

Iranian blogger Mr. Behi finds a local version of Starbucks in a Tehran neighborhood:

I could not hide my curiosity and asked about the reason for using the logo and name and why it was faked like that. His answers were interesting. It appeared that he was recently back from the United States where he used to manage three of the StarBucks stores in LA. He was proudly saying that the recipes were the same as StarBucks itself although I found it’s Vanilla latte a little bit extra flavored than the original ones. About the logo he added that he was afraid of the government officials not to blame him as he had heard that StarBucks is believed here as a Zionist company! (I never heard of it before and he would probably be safe anyway but he wanted not to give any chance to police to close down his shop).

Weird glasses for a coffee shop. But still, I can imagine this is a nice place to have a Danish Gol al-Muhammad.

Comments

[raf*]

dear issandr,

gul-e mohammad ...

as for "starbucks = zionist" - the chairman howard schultz is a strong & vocal supporter of the right-wing zionists in israel.

calls to boycott starbucks in arab countries (lebanon, jordan) have completely fizzled.

interestingly enough - starbucks closed its cafes in israel itself because they were not profitable.

--raf*

www.aqoul.com

[Sp]

But will they have Fair Trade coffee harvested by aboriginal women's cooperatives, and can you get a sugar-free raspberry shot flavoured organic skim soy milk decaf latte and the New York Times there?

Um, are those beer bottles on the shelf?

[Issandr El Amrani]

I think they have better papers than the New York Times there...