Coffee, sugar costs spur Starbucks price increase

You’ll soon be forking up an extra dime and a penny for a gentrified java.

Starbucks Corp. said it would raise the average price of its beverages by 11 cents at 4,500 stores in North America because of increases in the cost of coffee and sugar.

The price increase — the first since August 2000 — will amount to an estimated 3 percent for all the company’s drinks, Smith Barney analyst Mark Kalinowski said.

The company had announced that it would raise prices by the end of the year, saying coffee prices have risen 36 percent and sugar prices 39 percent in the past year.

Economy

Unsteady labor market causes dip in confidence

Job worries helped push consumer confidence down in September for the second consecutive month, a New York-based private research group said Tuesday.

The Consumer Confidence Index fell 1.9 points to 96.8 from a revised reading of 98.7 in August, according to The Conference Board. Analysts had expected a reading of 99.5.

Consumer confidence, which was as high as 144.7 in May 2000 when the job market was flourishing, has been volatile since the economy emerged from recession in November 2001.

It reached its lowest point in March 2003 at 64.4 with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but then experienced a gradual but inconsistent improvement as the job market recovery has remained tenuous, economists said.

Resources

Denver company sells its mineral leases in Kansas

Denver-based Evergreen Resources has finalized a deal to sell its interests in 766,000 acres of eastern Kansas property that has the potential to produce coal bed methane gas.

The company announced late Monday that it had closed a $22 million deal with Canadian-based Heartland Oil and Gas to purchase all of Evergreen’s mineral leases in Kansas. The leases are spread throughout eastern Kansas, including Jefferson County.

Evergreen put the leases up for sale after it agreed to merge with Pioneer Natural Resources.

The deal gives Heartland a significant stake in eastern Kansas’ emerging market for coal bed methane gas. Before the deal with Evergreen, Heartland had leases to drill for the gas on 252,000 acres in the state.

Technology

Motorola to cut jobs

Motorola Inc. will eliminate 1,000 jobs and take a charge of $50 million for severance benefits as it moves to complete a spinoff of its money-losing semiconductor unit, the company said Tuesday.

Analysts said the reductions would help the world’s No. 2 cell phone maker fine tune its operations.

Some of the job cuts are from corporate positions that Motorola officials determined were unnecessary after the company’s chip operations began working independently.