Starbucks' Seattle's Best Coffee brand will be in 9,000 Subway stores in the U.S. by the end of this year, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told analysts yesterday, reversing the company's long-held distaste for fast-food eateries, Melissa Allison and Amy Martinez report. "Candidly, given the fact that fast-food players have gone after the breakfast business -- specifically McDonald's -- in such a big way, and made such a big push into coffee, their core competitors want to compete directly with them in that space," Schultz said in a call discussing quarterly results. (Sales down 4%; profit better than …

Sears will become the exclusive national chain supplier of Whirlpool's Jenn-Air appliances, it announced yesterday, as the retailer begins an aggressive move into high-end kitchen appliances and attempts to take share from big-box competitors, Sandra M. Jones reports. Jenn-Air will no longer supply appliances to Home Depot and Lowe's by Jan. 1, according to Ann Fandozzi, Sears vp of sales and marketing. A new line of 17 cooktops, ovens, dishwashers and built-in refrigerators will arrive in 225 of Sears' biggest stores by Nov. 15, but there's also long-term component to the strategy. "If Depot and Lowe's are not on …

Following a nearly two-year investigation, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Intel saying that it, "used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market." Cuomo charges that that Intel paid or threatened computer makers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM in an effort to prevent them from doing business with its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, David Sarno reports. "Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors but also hurt average consumers, who were robbed of better products and lower prices," Cuomo says in a statement. The complaint …

Kellogg said yesterday that it would discontinue marketing Rice Krispies and Cocoa Krispies as products that could boost a child's immunity but would continue to provide the increased amounts of vitamins A, B, C and E that it added to the cereal last year. "While science shows that these antioxidants help support the immune system, given the public attention on H1N1, the company decided to make this change," Kellogg says in a statement. Emily Bryson York reports that the food industry is under increasing scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration, which is developing a standardized labeling system following …

Sales for "shapewear" -- undergarments that aim to give women wearing tight clothes a bulge-free silhouette -- have skyrocketed since Oprah put her imprimatur on Spanx nearly a decade ago. But wearing the undergarments present some practical problems, Rachel Dodes reports. There's no graceful way to take them off, for one thing. And, as one husband told his Spanx-wearing wife: "If you stuff five pounds into a two-pound container, it doesn't make the five pounds smaller. It just makes it stranger-looking and uncomfortable." Manufacturers are listening. Yummie Tummie, for one, sponsored a "tell us your shapewear nightmares" competition. …

When Paul Polman became CEO of Unilever at the beginning of the year, he promised to stoke sales growth. He's done so by boosting advertising, accelerating the introduction of new products and, it turns out, by cutting prices by as much as 3% -- even more than analysts realized. The number of goods sold increased by 3.6% in the company's fourth quarter as a result. CFO Jim Lawrence says Unilever will report lower selling prices into the first half of 2010, given year-on-year comparisons. "We are now about where we should be," he says, and he does not anticipate …

Concerned that Mickey Mouse has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character, Disney is re-imagining him for the future, Brooks Barnes reports. You can look forward to a rodent that's more cantankerous, cunning and heroic. Sounds just like the critters the cat drags in.

Dr. William Sutton, an authority on sports marketing and management, tells Barry Janoff it can be the best of times even during the worst of economic times if you have an aggressive, innovative playbook.

Mark Meadows' blog on Reuters has a picture of Toyota team principal Tadashi Yamashina tearing up as the company announced today that it was withdrawing from Formula One racing. Company president Akio Toyoda, who has been apologizing a lot lately, did so again -- this time for the team's repeated failures since joining the circuit in 2002. Toyota spent about $300 million annually on the sponsorship. Toyota's exit may not signal the end of big car companies exiting Formula One, writes Edward Gorman, motor racing correspondent for the London Times. Honda and BMW have already departed, although their …

What Formula One really needs, perhaps, is the support of a hot satirist to give it some gas with the public. On Monday's "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, host Stephen Colbert announced his Comedy Central show's sponsorship of the U.S. Speedskating team, Sean Gregory reports, and Colbert asked his fans to support it, too. The team's largest cash sponsor, the Dutch bank DSB, went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago. Colbert Nation logos will be stitched onto the suits of both long-track and short-track skaters during World Cup competitions before the Olympics. "We must …