I was sitting in Starbucks yesterday in Birmingham. Wistfully with my Fair Trade tea and cinnamon swirl, I was thinking about this great, American corporate goliath.
Coffee houses, of course, have a long history. The first one appeared in England in 1650. Less than a hundred years later London alone had 551 of them. They were a place where people could meet, gossip, read, write, think, and even do business. Gentlemen, because women were banned, could freely debate the issues of the day, leading the French novelist Antoine Prevost to comment that coffee houses were the “seats of English Liberty”. Their popularity coincided with the European enlightenment, and the aristocrats, philosophers, lawyers, politicians and artists of the age would meet in them.
I wondered if Starbucks coincides with a new enlightenment, and if it does, what kind?
Firstly there is something Puritan about the theme. There are no loud colours or loud music. Instead everything is cream and Nora Jones. In Starbucks they ask you not to smoke, not because it’s against the law, but because it might “damage the taste of the coffee”, which of course is the finest, richest, and most interesting coffee in the world, hand selected from 150,000 samples. There are a range of Fair Trade and organic products, so that you can eat healthily and responsibily.
This Puritanism rubs off on the customers. I overheard two women (they are now allowed in coffee houses) talk about breast feeding, quite openly, and how it’s more organic and natural than processed milk and therefore better. That the science is debtable doesn’t matter.
Starbuck’s Fair Trade products are popular because Fair Trade is a convenient and therefore convincing way that you can do your bit to bring Starbucks into more people’s lives. The economics is debtable, but again it doesn’t matter.
And why is that a large cinnamon Swirl seems more healthy for me in Starbucks than anywhere else?
This particular branch had a collection box for second-hand books, which was full to the top. There was also art, sponsored by Birmingham Council and painted by local artists. And there was a community board which displayed all the good work Starbucks is doing in LEDCs.
Starbucks makes it’s customers feel good by letting them share in this puritan, charitable work. It’s so smug, so middle class. And I’m just as bad.
06/01/2008 at 18:47 |
I used to work in a coffee shop. It was a local one which employed about eight staff in total, served tea and coffee as well as locally baked breads, pasties, buns and so forth. It was popular in our town centre for over twenty years and had a glowing reputation.
The Starbucks opened a stones throw away. My little coffee shop was forced out, to be replaced by a “3″ store. And the town is two shopping units closer to becoming a clone of every other.