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News & ArtsThursday, July 30, 2009
Chow / Money 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea Inspired by Starbucks: "Doomed"?
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:34 AM
Yes, says a blogger for Harvard Business Publishing:
...there's no way a corporate coffee chain can create an authentic neighborhood coffeehouse experience... Faking it is not a good strategy in bed or in retail... the clumsy cloak-and-dagger of how this "independent" store's status was handled leaves such a foul taste that I can only assume it will go the way of Circadia, Starbucks' failed, late-90s attempt at a similarly funky neighborhood coffeehouse that sold booze.Howard, stop fiddling with these distractions. Focus on improving the core.
I'm no "internationally recognized thought leader on user experience" like this guy is, and I hope that he's right, but I'm not at all convinced. It seems as if these faux-independent cafes, deployed in the right markets, could do just fine for Starbucks. The people that are vehemently anti-Starbucks anyway still won't go (at least as long as they're aware that the cafes are actually Starbuckses; a little extra profit will be made just by fooling people). But his premise assumes a value placed on authenticity. What is authentic? A hunt-club pub with burlap walls and creepy and wonderful taxidermied birds, opened a couple years ago in the middle of Seattle by a woman from Montana?
There's a percentage of the population that's rabidly anti-corporate and pro-independent-business, but the majority of people (even upscale urbanites) just don't care that much. The entire, and entirely successful, Urban Outfitters concept is served-up-for-you, mass-market-hip, and everybody buys that (even though U.O.'s president allegedly pulled a pro-same sex marriage T-shirt from inventory and definitely has contributed funds to hideous Republicans such as senator Rick Santorum). Faking it is, in fact, a tried-and-true strategy, depending on what it is you want to accomplish.
The "foul taste" above generated a ton of publicity, with Starbucks finding many defenders (as in comments here). And the public tends to forget such foul tastes fairly immediately, the minute the next flavor of the month comes along.
If it looks good (and most people, like over at Seattle Metblogs, think that it does*), and the coffee's better (and it should be, since shots are hand-pulled and drip's made to order in your choice of three different ways), and it has yummy, fresh, locally made pastries and so forth (check), then it avoids the problems most people in upscale urban neighborhoods have with Starbucks: not that it's Starbucks, per se, but that it's plasticky, unwelcoming for hanging out, and not that good.
It won't work everywhere, but that's not the plan. And sure, Starbucks needs to address its bigger problems. But 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea Inspired by Starbucks seems like a pretty smart adaptation to a specific environment, with lots of research and planning; it seems like the kind of "agility" that a thought-leader-on-user-experience might just as easily praise.
They should probably skip the poetry readings, though.
*To me it looks like they tried way too hard—it's evident that it's interior decor by committee, purposefully using all the upscale-independent-coffee-house tropes, rather than the product of one (or a few) actual independent minds. But, as I said, most people think it looks good, because most people just aren't all that particular: A close-enough facsimile is as good as the real thing.
Via the Seattle Times.
Photo of fake Howard Schultz from the opening day protests.
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But yeah 99% of people care much more about whether they like a place and much less about who owns it or whether they are local and they are right.
It's all basically an imitation of an economic phenomenon that was unique to the late 1960s and early 70s; specifically, the abandonment of the cities by the upper and middle classes and the massive economic and stylistic rush toward "modern" on the part of those people who moved to the suburbs. The upshot was that poor people and (poor) artists were left sitting in abandoned cities with collapsing economies, surrounded by what amounted to cast-off antiques; junk yards full of cast-iron bathtubs and beautiful old fixtures from Victorian apartment buildings. Two good examples of this kind of thing making its way into popular culture would be Fat Albert and Sanford & Son. When I was a kid my dad and I were on welfare, and we had what would now be tens of thousands of dollars worth of antiques that we pulled out of empty or abandoned buildings and landfills. That was our aesthetic, but it was a default aesthetic created by a massive socio-economic flux.
Now, people try to recapture that aesthetic because it feels more "authentic"; it reminds of us of our childhoods, and of, basically, the last time that anything interesting was happening in cities, before gentrification and the sifting effect that turned New York into fucking Disneyland. But that time has come and gone, and Linda, and the customers in Smith, have no more authentic claim to that aesthetic than Starbucks does. All those 1970s places are basically dioramas.
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I liked them better than the faux-historical ones that look like they're (and probably are) ordered straight out of a catalog, complete with dusty taxidermy, hurling gear, clay pipes, and other antique detritus pulled out of the thousands of real old Irish and British pubs that are being pulled down every day. Although a place like Fado or Murphy's is a decent place to slurp beer and watch soccer matches.
I think you need to visit both for comparison.
Perhaps for the first time in one or both cases?
I have actually been to both New York and Disneyland.
And yes, compared to what it was in 1979, New York now is Disneyland (this opinion is nearly universal among people who have been in NY since 1979, or who lived there in 1979, left at some point, and have been back recently).
As far as that goes, the same could be said of Seattle -- in the late '70s it was a complicated but economically desolate working class town with a lot more income (and, consequently, ethnic and cultural) diversity than it has now. I don't necessarily miss those days -- contrary to popular opinion there's nothing romantic about grinding poverty -- but nobody who experienced them can deny that they are very very over, and that the aesthetic of those times is now reproduced only as caricature. Kind of like Main Street USA, in Disneyland.
YIPEE!!
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Maybe menudo will become the next new thing.
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As I mentioned at Metblogs, I think that the true test is if it attracts enough people to become a comfortable place for hanging out. If so, the decor will get used, become slightly less shiny, and the place will become authentically worn-in. (fwiw, I find the the shiny new tables at victrola creepier than anything at 15th Ave c&t).
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Halfway through I was like...what, has Dan Savage come to his senses (with the comment about Linda's "authentic" burlap walls) and eventually scrolled back up to see who it was by, because it couldn't be his normal histrionic take on it.
Whether it succeeds or fails only depends on how they execute their day-to-day operations. Whether they give the people what they want. And what the people want has NOTHING to do with whether sbux "copied" or is "authentic" (wtf does that even mean these days?).
I live in the 'hood and I will continue to go to Victrola because I like Victrola but i will say this.
This new sbux incarnation is a huge improvement over the previous one. So, if this place is going to be a sbux no matter what, i think it's better now than it was before.
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there may not be anything wrong with a fake irish pub unless the get it wrong (whatever that means), or if they are building it where there are already at least two real irish pubs. especially if those two pubs are in, say, ireland.
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Judah's comparison is much much more apt than you might think.
They don't need to put these in the sticks or anywhere else, this is the most potentially positive press Starbucks has gotten in forever. People are going to come from all over to find it. i think its a smart idea and a very comfortable spot with good service.
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