I was reading this hatchet job from Reuters about Starbucks because, well, I’m a glutton for intellectual punishment. It’s about how Starbucks has been experimenting with stores using other branding, trying to go for a more local feel.
This article posits that “Perhaps consumer really do want something more than branded artifice; they want something genuinely local.” Bullshit.
This is wishful thinking on the part of people with a fetish for local mom-and-pop businesses. They write the same victory speeches on their LiveJournals every time one Wal-Mart moves out of a neighborhood, despite the fact that for every instance of that hundreds more move in.
Starbucks is facing attacks on all sides. They’ve got Peet’s and Caribou growing quickly. They’ve got McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts both heavily promoting their coffee lines these days. They’ve got the fact that they drastically overbuilt in the first place (though I thank them for it, as it inspired what was quite possibly the greatest standup comedy bit of all time) coupled with a double-digit unemployment rate that makes people think twice about that daily $5 cup of joe.
True, they do have local coffee shops improving the quality of their offerings as a direct response to Starbucks. Unlike retail, which is all about using volume to reduce costs while retaining a thin sliver of a profit margin, it’s not nearly so hard for local businesses to compete in an industry with 1,000% markup. The fact that they have to buy their coffee for 20% more than the chains is virtually irrelevant.
But people don’t give a shit about locality or being different, at least not enough people to matter. They all eat at Fridays and Olive Garden and shop at Wal-Mart and Target. Hell, go to any public place and at least 75% of people are wearing pants made of the same fabric and in the same color. Seinfeld once joked that we all ought to wear the same thing, the way aliens always do in sci-fi movies. Well, we haven’t settled on the shirt yet but we’re half way there.
So it’s hard for me to believe that a nation full of people who all own at least 4 pairs of blue jeans really worry about sameness when it comes to buying a latte. That’s just wishful thinking on the part of people resistant to change.
I don’t know where mom-and-pop stores got this recent mystique, but the whole fetish is just the modern equivalent of tilting at windmills. Thankfully it’s relegated largely to blogs and drum circles too, because I do love my Venti Apple Chai Latte.
