When Coffeehouses Attack
Posted on April 07, 2005
After reading about the Starbucks Delocator on BoingBoing last night I was going to write something about all the Anti-Starbucks rhetoric but this morning see Kurt Easterwood already did a splendid job of laying out what I wanted to say. He quotes the delocator.net Why Delocate? page and goes on to say:
"All employees receive the exact same training.... It's about fucking time! It actually sounds a lot like Japan, and while the manual-abiding "cog-like workforce" of Japan can be rightfully derided as a bit sterile, cold, and lacking in creativity, when it comes to retail, I'll take it any day of the week over the laissez faire attitude that seems to pervade much of American retail. And let's face it, American retail has by and large the worst customer service of any developed country on the planet. It sucks."
Kurt also links to Adam Greenfield's Anti-Anti Starbucks/Ikea rant Ikeaphobia and its discontents, an article I've pointed quite a few people to in the past. I certainly don't see anything wrong in searching for alternatives, or even independent alternatives but criticizing a successful business like starbucks for "making all of the stores identical: the same beverages, food, ambient sounds and smells" seems to miss the point why people frequent them, consistency. And in Japan that also means a smoke free environment, which is worth the price alone. A completely smoke free environment is a rarity in Japan and while other businesses changed their policies to allow smoking (Subway I'm looking at you) Starbucks didn't budge keeping every store smoke free.
Personally I'd like to see more energy focused on the origins of the raw product itself. We don't all have the privilege of living in uber-progressive centers where Fair Trade, organic or shade grown coffee is readily available, so for the rest of us who don't want to buy Folgers and care where our coffee comes from a Starbucks is a welcome sight.
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