Have you ever found yourself in a place of business, looked around at the money changing hands, and thought, "Someone is buying themselves a boat for Christmas this year?" I found myself thinking this the other day at the crack of dawn while sitting in line at Dutch Bros. with at least a dozen other cars ahead of me.
The Dutch Bros. business model has tapped into a societal hunger for drive-through coffee served by perennially happy Gen Zers making small talk to the background of alternative music. But life is short and well, at my age, I can't afford to spend too much of what I have left in coffee lines. And to be quite honest, my middle-aged hips just can't take regular doses of their caffeinated dessert in a cup. I try to replicate the magic of their products by occasionally squirting a generous dose of Hershey's chocolate syrup into my Costco bulk home-brewed java. It's just not the same.
But I digress. While waiting to pick up a multi-colored frost for my daughter and a chocolate-dipped coffee for myself, I found myself wondering about the details behind this drive-thru phenom. Fortunately, as a librarian, I have the skills and the library resources to dig out these details (skills that, my teenagers have told me, will do me no good in a zombie apocalypse, should I ever get a big head).
Company research is easy with resources from the University Library. Don't know where to start? We have a whole set of How Do I guides that are tailored to walk you through company, industry, and marketing research. For example, in How Do I Get Started with Company Research, I'm prompted to ask questions about my company that will guide how and where I search for information. Is Dutch Bros. a public company? A quick article search in the database ABI/Inform tells me that it just went public in September of this year. Public companies are required to disclose financial information, which makes finding information about them easier. Its recent conversion to a public company tells me finding historical financial data may be difficult if it's available at all.
Why are these points important? If you need to choose a company to research and are hoping to use the same company across all weeks of a course, or even across multiple courses, you will want to choose one that has a significant amount of information published about it. Since Dutch Bros. is a rising star (Morningstar tells me the company posted a 62% jump in its third-quarter 2021 revenue), there is a good chance a researcher will be well supplied in articles, financial data, and research reports.
The How Do I guides offer links to databases that are best used for specific types of information. If you want a listing of specific databases by subject or type, check out the databases listed under the company research subject our Research Databases page. The library offers multiple ways to access the information you need and guides to walk you through some of it.
As a way to celebrate company research (and the holiday season), here are some links to the secret menu drinks at Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin Donuts (make them work for that boat!). Or, if you prefer, a link to copycat coffee recipes to use with that Hershey's chocolate syrup.
Have a safe and happy holiday!