Now Starbucks Puts its Coffee Beans on to Supermarket Shelves By Ian Herbert The Independent Published: 15 August 2007 If proof was really needed that Starbucks is taking over the world, then it has just arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe in the form of The Two Closest Starbucks in Britain, a show in which the comedian Owen Powell, with the aid of a pedometer, reveals his mission to find the two branches of the chain that are nearest to each other in the UK. There are precisely 108 steps, Powell reveals, between the two branches in Villiers Street, just off the Strand in London, though that is nowhere near the closest. You need to visit the show to find out which are. The apparently irresistible growth of a corporation that began life as coffee joint run by three mildly hippie coffee enthusiasts in Pike Place Market, Seattle, in 1971, showed no signs of relenting yesterday when it declared its intention to go into battle with its brand in the supermarkets. The Starbucks consumer products...