many miles

Sitting at a Starbucks in center-city Philadelphia and remembering why I usually avoid Starbucks: this is not a coffee shop! No, this is .. uhm .. a washed-out version of a 1990′s corporate branding exercise. It almost looks like a coffe shop, but it’s just a worn out plastic version. At least the newer stores in the suburbs still have that shiny fake patina. But these older stores just look tired.

Maybe this is how true substance and character reveal themselves: they stand the test of time. So while real coffee shops usually get better and gain more character as they get older, Starbucks stores simply don’t .. they just wear out.

Of course, rather than bitching about this, I could just go somewhere else. And yes, of all the problems in the world, this barely registers on the “do-I-even-care” list. But seen from a different angle, the Starbucks-problem shows how we’ve let mega corporations roll over everything everywhere. Sure, they brought $4-lattes to every corner in every town with at least one intersection. But I’m not sure it was worth it.

One could argue that Starbucks basically only brought fastfood-thinking and the uniformity of McDonald’s to the coffee shop world. And it’s telling that today, when every hole-in-the-wall even in Armpit, USA, claims it serves “lattes”, it’s still difficult to not only get a good cup of coffee, but to be able to enjoy it in peace at a table in a place where they don’t play music so loud that one can’t hear ones own thoughts. Oh, and coffee wasn’t meant to be served in half-gallon paper cups.

Of course, there is a silver lining: just like McDonald’s and the other burger chains didn’t kill “the burger”, Starbucks hasn’t killed coffee (yet) — there are still some great coffee shops around. And as with so many other things, “the good ones” will (hopefully) always survive.

OK, enough with this fake outrage. I’m off to find a “real” coffee shop .. there’s got to be one around here somewhere.

- another post from the side of the road.