Everything but the Coffee

by Simon, Bryant

  To find out more about what business experts Silverstein and Fiske and cautious consumer Meredith were talking about when it came toOprah, gender, and buying, I went to Oprah’s Web page. She does talk about self-gifting, even if she doesn’t use that exact term. For instance, Oprah tells her fans to “pamper” themselves. But when she does, she tells them not to engage in simple self-indulgence but to reward their work, time, and contributions to their families and to pay attention to themselves a little. Self-denial, she maintains, can be just as dangerous as overindulgence. When Oprah is not urging viewers to take care of themselves and respect themselves with an occasional gift, someone else is. Her Web site once featured Wynona Judd’s journal entries. Under the heading “Putting Myself on the List,” the country singer explained that she sets aside fifteen minutes every day for herself. Linda Patch, a regular Oprah viewer, writes with almost militant defiance about her retail therapy, “You can call me selfish. I am really not threatened by that word any more.” Freed from this guilt, she declared that she “deserves some me time and me things.”17

  Patch doesn’t put Starbucks on her “for me” list, but other Oprah fans do. Against the chilling backdrop of what she called the “frightening realities of our age: terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, pollution, domestic violence, psychotic criminals who steal children right from their own beds,” best-selling writer and Oprah-anointed life coach Martha Beck still managed in 2005 to find “ten reasons to feel good about the future.” In an article published in Oprah’s O Magazine, she put “feminism” at the very top of her list. Next came “Starbucks Mocha Malt Frappuccino, with whipped cream.” “Yes, it’s odd,” Beck acknowledged, “that my list leaps from an enormous social movement to a slug of caffeine dressed in heaps of fat and sugar. But when the big things fragment our energy and optimism, it’s the little things that put us back together. Peaceful revolutionaries change the world by great effort and small comforts. Today, Mocha Malt Frappuccino is my favorite splurge. What’s yours?”18

  “I can’t live without my cuppa Starbucks Toffee Nut Latte, if I’ve had a hard day at work,” one mother wrote to Oprah. Caroline told Oprah that she wanted to shed thirty pounds, but she couldn’t always get her-self into the gym—that is, until she turned Starbucks into the reward carrot paired with the workout stick. Knowing that she gets a frothy drink after exercising, she can now get herself onto the Stairmaster and treadmill. “In an incredibly insecure world,” wrote another viewer (sounding a lot like Martha Beck), “people are trying to add more value and meaningfulness to everything they do, so if a cup of coffee could [give] them a moment of ‘feel good’ then a dollar here and there would hardly make a difference.”19

  It is difficult to know what the consumer persuaders at Starbucks are up to or what they watch on TV or what Web pages they surf. They aren’t the most talkative bunch, at least not in public. If they do tune into Oprah, that’s their secret. But clearly they know how to market their products to women, busy self-gifters, and others seeking quick and valuable doses of retail therapy.

  “Treat yourself—or anyone else—with the most convenient way to enjoy Starbucks—a Starbucks card.” “Inspire. Reward. Indulge.” These are how two advertisements for the Starbucks gift card begin. “Green tea beverages,” promises a company promotion, “are the perfect way to treat your-self.” United Kingdom public relations writers described a Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino, developed to create an association between the coffee company and the Wimbledon tennis tournament, as “an indulgent and creamy creation.” Banana Coco-Mocha Chip Frappuccinos and Eggnog Lattes delivered, the company promised, “sophisticated coffee indulgence[s].” Other beverages came with “indulgent touches.” “Indulge in the richness of Starbucks Hot Gourmet Cocoa,” another promotion urged customers. A Caramel Macchiato, vowed an in-store sign, “will indulge your senses.” Another claimed, “My drink is like a mental back rub.”20

  In January 2005, Starbucks introduced Chantico, a dense and oozy six-ounce drinkable chocolate dessert. “It’s about taking time for me,” a company spokesperson told a reporter. “It’s about one of those ‘ahh’ moments, and self-indulgence in a really small way.”21 Loaded with 390 calories and 21 grams of fat, maybe the drink was too indulgent, too big of a reward in too small of a cup. Or maybe it wasn’t big enough or rich enough. Starbucks discontinued Chantico in 2006. A year later, the company launched two new summer beverages: Dolce de Leche Latte and Dolce de Leche Frappuccino. “Topped with whipped cream and a dusting of toffee sprinkles,” read a company description, “Starbucks’ version of this traditional delicacy is a luxurious tasty treat.”22 Then with revenues dropping and its stock price falling, in the spring of 2008, the company tried to kick-start business with the introduction of two “refreshing low calorie” but still “indulgent” frozen, smoothie-type drinks called Vivanno.23

  • • •

  Adding to the indulgent appeal and value of its drinks, Starbucks laid out its stores to operate as live, three-dimensional environments for self-gifting. University of Houston professor Jackie Kacen, who conducted the studies on gender and self-gifting mentioned in the opening, pointed to Starbucks’ melodious soundtrack, soothing color scheme, and homey fireplaces. They evoke calm, comfortable feelings, she said. By contrast, “You don’t get rap music and screaming twelve-year-olds there.”

  “But,” I asked, “how can coffee—coffee loaded up with caffeine— make for a soothing environment?”

  “It’s like the cigarette break,” she declared. “Cigarettes, of course, are filled with nicotine, which is a stimulant. But by going outside to smoke, it slows you down mentally and you feel relaxed.”

  Same with Starbucks. When we have negative feelings, Kacen continued, “we know something is amiss and our goals are being thwarted.” One way to get back on track is to do something different or change environments. For lots of people, she noted, buying is the answer, and Starbucks has become that place to “relax and let go . . . because it reads as comfortable.” Consumers, then, pay the premium for access to this warm, safe, and reassuring space—just as second and third place seekers do.

  At the start of the Starbucks moment, McDonald’s was the most visited retailer in America. As a place, the Golden Arches stood for value and efficiency. It was not a site for self-gifting, except perhaps the occasional present to moms (and some dads) of not having to cook for the family. Close-up, in the details, Starbucks—the whole store, the whole experience—represents a rejection of the Golden Arches’ functional values. At Starbucks, there is no obvious plastic. No mascot. No Formica. No gray linoleum floors. No bright overhead fluorescent lighting. No blaring oranges and yellows. And seemingly no processed foods and products. McDonald’s, in contrast, doesn’t hide its rationality, even its artificiality. It is a place built with right angles and straight lines. Starbucks stores do just the opposite; they curve and bend. Few outlets are simple squares or rectangles. Some are round. Others look like Ls or pie slices. Overlapping circles and ovals hang over the coffee bar. The counters swoosh and roll. Squiggly lines and loops dance under the counters and across the murals on the walls. James Twitchell, the author of Living It Up, a chronicle on the emergence of the luxury economy in the United States in the 1980s, described the inside of Starbucks stores to me as almost “inappropriately elegant spaces.” Elegance, he added, reads as a reward for success and helps turn these places into ideal built environments for self-gifting.

  I talked about Starbucks’ design with experience architect Greg Beck. Broad shouldered and basketball player tall, Beck exudes a quiet, thoughtful command of things that belies his size. It seems to serve him well. Over the last decade, Beck has had a hand in designing interactive places like the CNN Center in Atlanta and the Sony Store in New York. I spent an afternoon with him in Manhattan going from one Starbucks to another. An effective teacher, he took me through a crash course in interior design. “What do you see?” I asked him as we walked into a crowded Starbucks sto
re in the middle of the block across the street from Rockefeller Center in Midtown. After a second cup of coffee in as many hours, I started firing questions at him. “What’s that? What’s this? What does this mean?” He never appeared overcaffeinated, not for a minute.

  Calmly, Beck talked about color first. He pointed to the wood floors, earth-tone tiles, and chairs and tables stained in light to medium shades of beige, brown, and cherry. All of this, Beck observed, communicated informality, relaxation, and naturalness. Together, they turn Starbucks stores into respites from the city—places, just as Jackie Kacen had suggested, to give yourself the gift of time and a calm moment.

  “What’s your overall impression?” I asked Beck as he strolled off to another appointment.

  “Well,” he said, pausing as he looked around again, “everything is high quality, at least not too cheap. There is a kind of luxury to the place that customers get to drink in.”

  Even in Manhattan’s packed confines, many Starbucks stores look spacious. It seems like the company only chose large, elegant Art Deco buildings with ten-, twelve-, even fifteen-foot ceilings for its coffee-houses. Sometimes the locations had multiple rooms and floors. But when you study the places, you see that no matter how big the footprint, Starbucks doesn’t put the tables and chairs in its stores too close together. Unlike a Parisian café, they aren’t pressed up against each other so tight that customers can smell their neighbor’s food and cologne. Instead, they stand apart, positioned so that users get a sense of privacy, making the stores, as mentioned in the last chapter, perfect alone-in-public spaces rather than third places. The soft sofas and chairs are often tucked in corners or face each other, forming their own little alcoves. When you add up the total number of seats, you discover there really aren’t that many places to sit at a Starbucks in proportion to the size of the space. All of this is, of course, intentional.

  Laura Paquet studies not just what shoppers say about their urges to splurge but also what they do. For the “well-heeled,” as she called them, “lots of people say good things about a place.” Drawing an important distinction, she added that crowds send negative signals. Starbucks customers associate places crammed with merchandise and shoppers with the poor, down markets, and Wal-Mart. Space says something else. Room between tables and couches communicates opulence. Paquet talked about bathrooms to underline her point. Multiple toilet stalls behind a single door convey efficiency, while a single bathroom—like every Starbucks has—implies money and status. A few extra feet here and there, Paquet laughed, “says we can afford empty space.”

  Like Greg Beck and Laura Paquet, Michelle Isroff thinks hard about the details of consumer places. She works for Big Red Rooster, a design, marketing, and branding firm in Columbus, Ohio. As part of her job, she studies shopping patterns and retail design. Late one June afternoon, we walked into a bank converted into a Starbucks in Bexley, Ohio, an upscale Columbus suburb. The store was huge, with a wide glass chandelier and a high vaulted ceiling. It was easy to imagine the building in the past with a line of tellers, a waiting area, loan officers’ desks, and a thick door leading to the president’s wood-paneled office. But all that was gone. What stuck out to Isroff, just like it would to Paquet, was how few tables the store actually had. There were only forty seats in the entire place. I asked her why it seemed so empty. Gaps, she explained, help shuttle the take-away customers through the store. But, even more, the wasted space—and that’s really what it is—sends a message. Starbucks is announcing, in effect, that it can afford to throw away a few hundred square feet, and you deserve it. “It’s luxury,” she said.

  The chairs, Isroff told me, also figured prominently in Starbucks’ staging of luxury. Just seeing them—extrawide and bursting at the seams with padding—announces to customers that Starbucks is an upscale place to sit and relax, both luxuries and indulgences in our go-go world.

  Not only does Isroff study interior spaces; she also analyzes color. She imagines herself, in fact, as a colorologist in training. When she went to Starbucks for the first time in the early 1990s, America, she said, was draped in beige. Tan and khaki covered everything. Those colors spoke of Starbucks’ (and other companies’) moves to connect with people seeking authenticity and more natural products—and perhaps some respite. But, as she pointed out when we visited several Columbus Starbucks, the earth-toned chairs were not the only chairs in the stores. Many outlets by that time—2006—also had a couple of overstuffed purple velour Queen Anne–style armchairs. To Isroff, these bulky upholstered pieces of furniture made Starbucks into a “weirdly affluent, theatric space.”

  “How can purple velour chairs mean so much?” I asked.

  She chuckled as if to say, Oh, there is so much you need to learn. “Velour,” she explained, usually covers chairs in that “special room in the house—one of those rooms you don’t sit in very often.” But at Starbucks you do get to sit there. “It’s like a gift, a luxury gift,” she said, adding that “purple is an opulent and regal color. Historically, you see it in theaters or hotel dining rooms—places of affluent experience.”

  From what I learned by talking to designers and architects, the varied and careful staging at Starbucks turned the stores into a kind of multiple self-gifting venue, perfect for repeat customers looking for different emotional boosts on different days. Need a quick coffee to go? Then the place is uncluttered enough to keep the line moving (plus you could always hit the drive-through). Need quiet or relaxation or alone time? Sit in one of the soft beige chairs set off in a corner in the back. Want a little luxury and indulgence? Then settle down in a purple velour chair by the front window. Different colors for different moods and different rewards. This strategy worked quite well.

  CALCULATING COSTS

  Oprah Winfrey, as her fans will tell you, does not believe only in every-day pampering and indulgence. She regularly delivers strong sermons to her flock about personal responsibility.24 Over the years, she has coupled her calls for self-gifting with stern warnings against overspending. Like most of us (except perhaps for Wall Street bankers), she has heard too many stories of people buying without thinking, running up credit card debt, and pushing themselves toward the brink of financial disaster. To help her fans out, she regularly invites guests onto her show to talk about financial planning, budgeting, and fiscal belt tightening. Long before the mortgage crisis of 2008, she produced a multiple-episode “debt diet” clinic to guide her audience toward a “clear path to financial freedom.”

  As a focal point for the debt relief series, Oprah and her team of experts developed a nine-step plan. Step 1 instructed participants to determine “how much debt . . . do you really have?” Once you figure this out, down to the very last penny, you are ready for step 2: “finding out where your money is going!” Oprah recommended starting with David Bach’s Latte Factor®—a trademarked term. According to Bach, a Steve Wynn lookalike and author of the best-selling Finish Rich books, this is a “simple concept that can help you get out of debt.” “If you put just $10 a day toward your debt,” he explains, “rather than spending it on fancy cups of coffee, cigarettes, bottled water or fast food, in one year you could put $3600 toward your debt!”25

  Other financial experts offered similar advice. A group at bankrate .com pointed to possible “java jolt savings,” advising people to “make coffee at home.”26 Scott Burns got even more specific with his “Starbucks Solution.” “Giving up that daily latte,” he argued, “can make you a millionaire.” It works this way, said Burns: A Starbucks grande latte costs about $3.50. If you drink one every day, that would add up to $24.50 a week, $105 a month, and $1,260 per year spent on milky caffeinated drinks. According to Burns, if you put this money instead into a 401(k) for ten years and it grew at a rate of 10 percent per year, you would have $23,959 in your account. Fifteen years later, the latte fund would mushroom to $167,564. By the forty-second year, the account— by Burns’s pre–New Depression calculations—would be just shy of the target: one million dollars.
27

  Some Oprah fans followed the debt doctors’ advice to the letter. In 2004, Jacque was in trouble. Mired in debt, she told Oprah she walked around all day in a fog of anger and resentment. At night, she couldn’t sleep. During the afternoons, she couldn’t stay awake. Falling fast toward rock bottom, she decided to go on Oprah’s debt diet right away. Eventually she dug herself out of her deep financial hole. She even started to save some money and enjoy life. “My biggest sacrifice,” she admitted, “is giving up my Starbucks Caramel Macchiato every morning.” 28

  Other Oprah fans wondered if all the penny pinching and self-denial was worth it. For a few of these people, the debt doctors’ advice backfired and only reinforced the sense of Starbucks as a luxury product and valuable experience. Neuropsychologists who study buying have repeatedly found that consumers experience a surge of good feelings— pleasure—when they act against their narrow economic self-interest. This kind of buying, then, creates a counterintuitive logic and value— one that could fuel luxury consumption in the face of advice about austerity and limits.29

  “Do you believe that Starbucks is a waste of money?” asked the organizers of a yahoo.com discussion board. “I was considering this matter today,” answered one woman. She told the members of this virtual community that she used to go to Starbucks “only once or twice a week,” but then she started going even more. “Now I’ve gotten into a routine of getting up at 6:30 A.M., going to the gym and getting some Starbucks afterward.” She took out her calculator. Sounding like David Bach or Scott Burns, she figured out that going for a latte five to six days a week at $3.75 per day added up to $18.75 per week and $975 per year. Sure, she could do other things with that money, but, as she purred at the end of her post, “that wonderful concoction of sugar, caffeine, and whipped cream is so delicious” that it kept her going to the gym and feeling good. Wasn’t that worth something, she wanted to know. “For $975,” answered another member of the yahoo.com discussion, “you get a tremendous number of little luxury rewards every year, right?”30