Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks
Bryant Simon
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0520269926
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
But the Coffee mocha!” By putting it this way, it explains, “The partner recognized the customer by name. There was a personal connection.”35 Starbucks’ drinks and staged customer service routines attempt to turn each customer into a unique individual. But at Starbucks there is an added bonus. These individuals don’t have to risk leaving the mainstream to express their individuality. Surely some customers don’t care about the personal touch. They just want their lattes, and they want them to.
Predictability turns every place into the same place.41 Residents of Benicia, California, had the same fear, and it focused on Starbucks. When the coffee giant petitioned in 2007 to open a fifth store in this well-heeled Northern California coastal town with a population of twenty-seven thousand, some locals balked. “It’s a serious problem,” complained Jan Cox-Golovich, a former city council member and owner of an independent café serving organic, fair-trade coffee. Sounding like Gopnik, she.
Igo’s, Massey’s, and Dalaney’s stories seem to me to represent the exception rather than the rule.29 I have been to plenty of Starbucks without much talk. Most times when I have talked with people I didn’t know at Starbucks, my kids were involved. I have seen this with others as well. With a four-year-old by your side, you are marked as safe. Twice outside the United States, I talked with people I didn’t know—other Americans. Another time, I was sitting in the tiny Starbucks in Margate, New.
Their urges to splurge but also what they do. For the “well-heeled,” as she called them, “lots of people say good things about a place.” Drawing an important distinction, she added that crowds send negative signals. Starbucks customers associate places crammed with merchandise and shoppers with the poor, down markets, and Wal-Mart. Space says something else. Room between tables and couches communicates opulence. Paquet talked about bathrooms to underline her point. Multiple toilet stalls behind a.
Weren’t cultural bargains any more. Without saying it out loud, Starbucks admitted that the moment when it could charge a premium for the privilege of carrying its cups had passed. Beginning in 2008, the company introduced dollar coffees, midday drink bargains, all-day breakfast deals and meal combos, and frequent-customer discounts.29 Competing on price, not culture, is what Wal-Mart and McDonald’s do. Still, the rebellion against Starbucks, which demonstrated that consumers weren’t just dupes.