Everything but the Coffee (40 page)

28.
Richard Florida makes this point again and again in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

29.
See Jackie Mason’s riff on Starbucks in which he wonders why someone would pay so much for coffee: “Jackie Mason on Starbucks—A Little Levity,” available at
www.organicconsumers.org/starbucks/jackie.cfm
.

30.
Janet Adamy, “Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks: A Battle of Coffee Tribes,”
Wall Street Journal
, Apr. 10, 2006. See also Mike Millard, “Choosing Our Religion,”
Boston Phoenix
, Mar. 2, 2007. At that point, Dunkin’ Donuts was not competing with Starbucks. Company executives knew they wanted something else. In fact, they marketed themselves as the opposite of Starbucks, and so did Burger King. In 2005, the burger company introduced Big Joe coffee. Taking a jab at Starbucks, one of the signs for Big Joe said, “If you want expensive coffee, buy two.” Not long after Big Joe’s launch, Denny Post told a reporter that the new product was the “anti-Starbucks.” See Tiffany Montgomery, “The New Brew Scramble,”
Orange County Register
, Oct. 28, 2005.

31.
Ritzer makes a similar point, but to demonstrate a different overall argument in Ritzer,
The McDonaldization of Society 5
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2008), 211–231.

32.
“My Starbucks,”
Starbucks Corporation Corporate Responsibility Report/Fiscal 2006 Annual Report
, 15,
www.starbucks.com/edgesuite.net/CSR_reports/omr_005_FY06_CSR_AR.pdf
.

33.
Janet Adamy, “At Starbucks, Coffee Comes with New Décor,”
Wall Street Journal
, Nov. 10, 2006.

34.
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore,
The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).

35.
Learning Journey Guide
(Seattle: Starbucks, 2003), 98, 122. This is the company’s employee manual.

36.
An interesting discussion of this type of negotiation with products can be found in Chua Beng Huat,
Life Is Not Complete without Shopping: Consumption Culture in Singapore
(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003).

37.
Naomi Klein,
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
(New York: Picador, 2002).

38.
Thomas L. Robinson, entry under “United States of Generica,”
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=united+states+of+generica
, Aug. 12, 2006.

39.
Joel Kotkin, “Grass-Roots Business: Helping the Little Guy Fight the Big Guy,”
New York Times
, Oct. 24, 1999. See also Monte Williams, “Westchester Hamlet Fears an Invasion by Starbucks,”
New York Times
, Oct. 23, 1996.

40.
The television show
The Sopranos
got at this in another way. In one episode, two older men who work for Tony Soprano walk into a new Starbucks-like coffee shop in a gentrifying neighborhood and offer protection. The young manager laughs at them, saying that the company won’t authorize such a payment because it is all computerized and regulated. The two men mumble as they leave the store, “It’s over for the little guy.” For more on the episode, see
www.hbo.com/sopranos/episode/season6/episode73.shtml
.

41.
Adam Gopnik, “Gothamitis,”
New Yorker
, Jan. 1, 2007.

42.
Rachel Raskin-Zirhen, “Officials Look at Ways to Prevent Starbucks Overflow,”
Contra Costa Times
, Feb. 9, 2007; Danielle Samaniego, “Benicia Looks at Limiting Chain Stores,”
Contra Costa Times
, Feb. 16, 2007; and Matthias Gafni, “Benicia Commissioners Support Starbucks Ban,”
Vallejo Times Herald
, Mar. 10, 2007. For a broader study of this phenomenon in Britain, see “Clone Town Britain Survey: Results Reveal National Identity Crisis,” June 6, 2005, available at
www.neweconomics.org/gen/12345news_clonetownbritainresults.aspx
; and BBC News, “Attack of the Clone Towns,” June 6, 2005, available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4602953.stm
.

43.
See Jones’s documentary,
The Siren of the Sea
, available at
www.vimeo.com/adampatrickjones/videos/tag:starbucks
.

44.
Ruth Ann Dailey, “Starbucks Is the Real Evil Empire,”
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
, Mar. 26, 2007.

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 Out
(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.”