Cash-strapped Starbuck's pushing landlords for rent breaks

Deflation Watch: Starbucks is using brokers from the Cushman & Wakefield commercial real estate brokerage to push landlords to reduce rental rates for stores around the country, a couple of Philadelphia real estate sources tell me.

Starbucks operates more than 7,000 stores and licenses more than 4,000 more, and said in January it was trying to cut costs across the board. The company "is pushing some U.S. landlords for as much as a 25 percent reduction in lease rates, taking advantage of a declining real estate market to save on rent," Bloomberg reports here.

Tough on landlords. But will it mean cheaper coffee? If not, we're still stopping at Wawa - or boiling our java on the stove.