JC Penney and Caribou Coffee: Broken up before anything began

If you’ve ever wanted your local JC Penney store to feel like daybreak at a cabin in the woods of Minnesota, you’re out of luck for now.

Caribou Coffee CEO Mike Tattersfield told Blooomberg News last week that the company is no longer considering a partnership with JC Penney  — he didn’t say why. The in-store coffee shop would have been one part of the department store’s major revamp and would have been comparable to the way Starbucks has entered Targets and grocery stores.

(Wondering what the in-store Caribou Coffee would have looked like? Based on a staged photo, the prototype didn’t have a fireplace, which was the best part of many long days of studying at a Caribou near my college.)

The strategy of adding coffee and other food options to JC Penney is meant to give the brick-and-mortar store an advantage over online shopping competitors.

What do you think? If you’re not a regular JC Penney shopper, would the promise of coffee be enough to draw you in?

Related:

Learn more about Caribou Coffee CEO Mike Tattersfield and what he says makes Caribou Coffee unique.

Image by JFXie, Flickr Creative Commons.