Everything but the Coffee

by Simon, Bryant

  45. On Starbucks’ earlier attachments to Seattle, see James Lyons, Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America (London: Wallflower, 2004).

  CHAPTER III

  1. On Starbucks’ attempts to commercialize talk, see related points in Rudolf P. Gaudio, “Coffeetalk: Starbucks and the Commercialization of Casual Conversation,” Language in Society 32 (Nov. 2003): 659–691.

  2. For instance, see Albert Muinz Jr. and Thomas O’Guinn, “Brand Communities,” Journal of Consumer Research 27 (Mar. 2001): 412–432; and Lucas Conley, OBD: Obsessive Brand Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).

  3. Alex Beam, “He Gets a Buzz from Starbucks,” Boston Globe, Feb. 20, 2006. See also Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of Community (New York: Marlowe, 1993); and Oldenburg, Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the “Great Good Places” at the Heart of Our Communities (New York: Marlowe, 2002).

  4. Amy Wu, “Starbucks’ World Won’t Be Built in a Day,” Fortune, June 27, 2003.

  5. Howard Schultz, Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 281 (quote) and 119–120.

  6. Sylvia Wieland Nogaki, “Starbucks’ New Splash,” Seattle Times, May 18, 1992; and Taylor Clark, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), 136.

  7. On the social promises of virtual community, see Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (New York: Perseus Books, 1993); Steve Jones, “Information, Internet, and Community: Notes toward an Understanding of Community in the Information Age,” in Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, ed. Steve Jones (New York: Sage, 1998), 1–35; and Kevin Robins, “Against Virtual Community,” Angelaki 4 (1999): 163–170.

  8. Jonathan Lemire, “Starbucks’ Wacky World,” New York Daily World, Mar. 20, 2005. See a similar set of observations in Sandra Thompson, “Bringing Us Together—One Tall Latte at a Time,” St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 15, 2003.

  9. Alfred Lubrano, “Just the Place for People to Perk Up?” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 16, 2004. I made similarly misguided comments to Terry Golway, “Like It or Not, the Postmodern Malt Shop,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2004.

  10. Edward C. Baig, “Welcome to the Officeless Office,” Business Week, June 26, 1995.

  11. Jim Stafford, “Internet, Coffee Ready to Travel, No Wires Attached—Wireless Technology Lets Work Leave the Office,” Daily Oklahoman, July 27, 2003.

  12. Jim Shelton, “Work Has Its Perks,” New Haven Register, Nov. 4, 2002.

  13. Starbucks used to charge thirty dollars per month for wireless. However, in the midst of its 2008 New Depression crisis-inspired makeover, the company introduced free wireless, but in order to get access to it, customers had to register for a Starbucks card and thus share marketing information with the company.

  14. Making itself into a safe place for women translated into a steady business in the United States, Japan, and Britain. On this topic, see Ken Belson, “As Starbucks Grows, Japan, Too, Is Awash,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 2001; and Jonathan Morris, “Cappuccino Conquests,” www.cappuccinoconquests.org.uk.

  15. “Best of 2005,” www.portlandphoenix.com.

  16. Paco Underhill, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 127–128.

  17. John Seabrook, “A New Map,” New Yorker, Mar. 27, 2006, 29, 31. In “The Bus Boy,” a Seinfeld episode from season 2 (number 12), George regales Jerry with his knowledge of where to find the best toilets in the city. Of course, he needs this copious knowledge because the city doesn’t have enough public bathrooms.

  18. Quoted in Clark, Starbucked, 113.

  19. For more on access to private bathrooms for the homeless in New York, in particular, see Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 173–187. His solution, by the way, is more truly public bathrooms.

  20. Rachel Pleatman, “Starbucks’ Cup of Success Runs Over,” The Eagle [American University’s student paper], Feb. 23, 2005.

  21. Lizzie Skurnick, “Why We Write at Starbucks,” Mar. 19, 2003, www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a44.asp.

  22. The term weak ties comes from sociologist Mark Granovetter, although I’m using it in a looser and more literal sense than he might use it. See his article, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (May 1973): 1360–1380.

  23. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). See also on emotion work, Robin Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 4, 26; Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (London: Routledge, 2005), 179–204; and David Grazian, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). On Starbucks, see my article “Consuming Lattes and Labor, or Working at the Starbucks,” International Journal of Labor and Working-Class History 74 (Fall 2008): 193–211.

  24. In some ways this is similar to the relationships tenants imagine with their doormen. See Peter Bearman, Doorman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), i-37.

  25. Posted by Mrs. T, Feb. 12, 2007, as part of the discussion thread “Claim: Starbucks Has Figured Out How to Make Employees ‘Almost excessively happy,’” www.Starbucksgossip.com, http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2007/02/claim_starbucks.html.

  26. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). For an example that explores the history of public space in an earlier period, see Mary P. Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

  27. Elijah Anderson, “The Cosmopolitan Canopy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 595 (Sept. 2004): 14–31.

  28. Jason Foster, “Staying at Home and Staying Sane,” Rock Hill Herald, Feb. 28, 2005.

  29. See another exploration of community and the coffee shop in Anthony M. Orum, “All the World’s a Coffee Shop: Reflections on Place, Community, and Identity,” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (Summer 2005).

  30. See Weston’s blog, “The Gruntled Center,” http://gruntledcenter.blogspot.com.

  31. Murray Evans, “Sociology Professor Takes Coffee Culture to the Classroom,” Washington Post, Mar. 2, 2005. On the coffeehouse and its history, see Markman Ellis, The Coffee-House (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2004); and Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).

  32. Antony Wild, Coffee: A Dark History (New York: Norton, 2005).

  33. Faith Popcorn, The Popcorn Report: Faith Popcorn on the Future of Your Company, Your World, Your Life (New York: HarperBusiness, 1991), 27–33. For more on this climate of fear, see Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

  34. Setha M. Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York: Routledge, 2003); and Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).

  35. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (Jan. 1995): 65–77. I cite this article here rather than Putnam’s book of the same title because this was when he first formulated his thesis. By the time the book came out, his ideas were already quite familiar, and in some ways, people were already moving on, looking for community at places like Starbucks.

  36. On the value of connections or what he would call “social currency,” see Douglas Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside O
ut (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 78–101.

  37. On turnover rates, see Gretchen Weber, “Preserving the Starbucks Counter Culture,” Workforce Management (Sept. 2005), www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/23/94/44/.

  38. Sensing the costs of the lack of connections with workers, Starbucks announced in October 2008—again in the midst of the economic crisis—that it would change its scheduling system. “The program,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Janet Adamy, “aims to reduce the company’s labor costs and improve sales by fostering familiarity between customers and employees” (emphasis added). Adamy, “Starbucks Is Extending Shifts for Baristas,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6, 2008. See also Simon, “Consuming Lattes and Labor.”

  39. George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2005).

  40. Quoted in Mike Marqusee, “Toward a Culture of Diversity,” The Hindu, Oct. 15, 2006, www.thehindu.com/mag/2006/10/15/stories/2006101500070300.htm.

  41. Catherine McLean, “Starbucks to Grind through Europe,” Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 8, 2000.

  42. Jason Gay, “Brewhaha,” Boston Phoenix, June 24–July 1, 1999.

  43. Kristen Millares Bolt, “Starbucks Hopes to Generate Conversation with Quote-Spewing Cups,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 29, 2004.

  44. Amy Johannes, “Writings on Starbucks Cup Upset Customer,” Promo Magazine, May 9, 2007, http://promomagazine.com/news/writings_starbucks_cup_upsets_customer_050907/.

  45. Analiz Gonzalez, “BU Starbucks Pulls Cups Due to Homosexual Quote,” posted Sept. 7, 2005, at www.baylor.edu/Lariat/news.php?action=story&story=35546; Lornet Turnbull, “Tempest Brews over Quotes on Starbucks Cups,” Seattle Times, Aug. 30, 2005.

  46. Ellis, The Coffee-House, 236–237.

  47. Schultz, Pour Your Heart into It, 252.

  48. Arthur Rubinfeld and Collins Hemingway, Built for Growth: Expanding Your Business around the Corner or across the Globe (Philadelphia: Wharton School Publishing, 2005), 73.

  49. On the iPod and cocooning, see Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

  50. Kathy Hedberg, “Whoa: Starbucks Thinks Coffee Drinkers Need Help to Talk,” Lewiston Morning Tribune, Jan. 3, 2005.

  51. For more on this point, go to www.benfranklin300.org/chc.

  52. E-mail from Audrey Lincoff, Feb. 16, 2007, in author’s possession.

  53. On the banning of the weekly papers, see Knute Berger, “Bitter Brew: Starbucks Corporate Culture Grows More Acrid,” Seattle Weekly, Sept. 20, 2000; and “Starbucks, Censorship, and Diversity in the Heartland,” Nov. 17, 2004, available at www.vagablogging.net/starbucks-censorship-and-diversity-in-the-heartland.html.

  54. Jason Koulouras, “Employee Fired by Starbucks over Blog,” National Post and Global News, Sept. 3, 2004.

  55. Quote from Valerie Hwang, Starbucks spokesperson, Hedberg, “Whoa.” On the larger ways that limiting speech distorts public space and ultimately democracy, see Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2004).

  56. From Chris Thomas as part of the response to Howard Schultz’s “secret” memo, “Did Starbucks’ CEO Really Say That?” http://seekingalpha.com/article/26471-did-starbucks-ceo-really-say-that.

  57. On what the coffeehouse represents see, “Commentary: Dreaming of My Own Private Starbucks,” West Central Tribune, Mar. 12, 2007.

  58. An essay by former Starbucks employee Sandra Griffins got me thinking about Starbucks along these lines. See Sandra Griffin, “Starbucks as Simulacrum” (Apr. 16, 2005), in author’s possession. See also Jean Baudrillard, Mark Poster, and Jacques Mourrain, eds., Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 166–184.

  59. Anemona Hartocollis, “Coping: Gazing into a Coffee Shop and Seeing the World,” New York Times, Sept. 29, 2002; and Clark, Starbucked, 77.

  60. In 2008, Starbucks even became a sponsor of the avant-grande. See http://starbucksavant-grande.com/.r.

  61. See, for example, George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society 5 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2008); Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World; and Ritzer, “Islands of the Living Dead: The Social Geography of McDonaldization,” American Behavioral Scientist 47 (Oct. 2003): 119–136.

  62. Whyte quoted by Malcolm Galdwell, “The Science of Shopping,” New Yorker, Nov. 4, 1996.

  63. See an expression of this disappointment of not finding community at Starbucks in Benjamin Aides Wurgaft, “Starbucks and Rootless Cosmopolitanism,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (2003): 71–75.

  CHAPTER IV

  1. Michael Silverstein and John Butman, Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer (New York: Portfolio, 2006), 44.

  2. For her comments, see www.austinstone.org/who/meredithlemmon.htm.

  3. For several helpful and insightful scholarly investigations of self-gifting, see Jacqueline J. Kacen, “Phenomenological Insights in Mood and Mood Related Consumer Behaviors,” Advances in Consumer Research 21 (1994): 510–525; David Glen Mick and Michelle Demoss, “Self-Gifts: Phenomenological Insights from Four Contexts,” Journal of Consumer Research 17 (Dec. 1990): 322–332; Andrew Smith and Leigh Sparks, “It’s Nice to Get a Wee Treat If You Have Had a Bad Week: Consumer Motivations in Retail Loyalty Scheme Points Redemption,” Journal of Business Research (June 2008), available at 10.1016/j.jbusres.2008 .06.013.

  4. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oniomania.

  5. See, for example, Andrea Dickson, “Stop Being a Slave to Starbucks,” June 4, 2007, www.wisebread.com/stop-being-a-slave-to-starbucks-how-to-quit-caffeine.

  6. Not much has been written on gender and self-gifting. See, however, Jacqueline J. Kacen, “Retail Therapy: Consumers’ Shopping Cures for Negative Moods,” conference paper in author’s possession (1999); and Helga Dittmar, Jane Beattie, and Susanne Friese, “Gender Identity and Material Symbols: Objects and Decision Consideration in Impulse Purchases,” Journal of Economic Psychology 15 (1995): 491–511.

  7. Julie Bosman, “Is This Joe for You?” New York Times, June 8, 2006. And on “frou-frou,” see WhiteRavenSoars, posted Jan. 16, 2009, at www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fru%20fru.

  8. See, for example, Andrea Dickson, “Stop Being a Slave to Starbucks,” June 4, 2007, available at, www.wisebread.com/stop-being-a-slave-to-starbucks-how-to-quit-caffeine.

  9. Sharon Zukin, Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004). On women, buying, and emotion (and certainly for a different perspective), see Carolyn Wesson, Women Who Shop Too Much: Overcoming the Urge to Splurge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

  10. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  11. On the larger history of buying as therapy, see, for example, T. J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930,” in The Culture of Consumption, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 1–38.

  12. Popcorn, The Popcorn Report (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).

  13. Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske, Trading Up: The New American Luxury (New York: Portfolio, 2003), vxi.

  14. Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works— and How It’s Transforming the American Economy (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

  15. Silverstein and Neil, Trading Up. See also Pamela Danziger, Let Them Eat Cake: Marketing Luxury to the Masses as Well as the Classes (Chicago: Kaplan Business, 2005).

  16. Taylor Clark, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), 50.

  17. “Wynona’s Journal: Putting Myself on the List” and Linda Patch, “Selfishness to Sacredness,” www.oprah.com.

  18
. Martha Beck, “Ten Reasons to Feel Good about the Future,” O Magazine, Mar. 2004, available at www.leavingthesaints.com/ten_things.html.

  19. “Things I Can’t Live Without,” a post by teacupmom, Feb. 28, 2004; and a post by moochie217, Aug. 8, 2004, at www.oprah.com.

  20. Clark, Starbucked, 227.

  21. Bruce Horovitz, “Starbucks Pours Indulgent Chocolate Drink,” USA Today, Oct. 13, 2004.

  22. Burt Helm, “Saving Starbucks’ Soul,” Business Week, Apr. 9, 2007.

  23. Andrea James, “Starbucks Hopes New Drinks Can Lift Profits,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Apr. 30, 2008.

  24. For more on Oprah’s worldview, see Jeffrey Louis Decker’s look at recent Oprah scholarship, “Saint Oprah,” Modern Fiction Studies 52 (Spring 2006): 169–178.

  25. “What Is the Latte Factor?” www.finishrich.com/free_resources/fr_lattefactor.php.

  26. “15 Simple Ways to Squeeze Your Budget,” www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/20040115a1.asp.

  27. Scott Burns, “Starbucks Solution, Part I,” Sept. 14, 2003, www.uexpress.com/scottburns/index.html?uc_full_date=20030914.

  28. Jacquecano, “Breathing Space,” posted Apr. 7, 2006, at www.oprah.com.

  29. Howard Kimeldorf, Rachel Myer, Monica Prasad, and Ian Robinson, “Consumers with a Conscience: Will They Pay More?” Context (Winter 2006): 24.

  30. “Is Starbucks a Waste of Money?” http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081102132334AASTsoR.

  31. Lisa Bree, “Crossroads,” posted Feb. 18, 2006, at www.oprah.com.

  32. Blaine Harden, “Javanomics 101: Today’s Coffee Is Tomorrow’s Debt,” Washington Post, June 18, 2005.

  33. Michael Stroh, “Kicking Caffeine: Science and Research,” Baltimore Sun, Nov. 5, 2004.

  34. Tim Harford, “Starbucks Economics: Solving the Mystery of the Elusive ‘Short’ Cappuccino,” Slate.com, Jan. 6, 2006.

  35. Michael McCarthy, “The Caffeine Count in Your Morning Fix,” Wall Street Journal, Apr. 13, 2004.

  36. “Accidental Starbucks Diet,” Mar. 21, 2006, www.drbob.org/babble/health/20060202/msgs/622864.html.