David fells Goliath - TTLG Forums

demagogue on 31/1/2008 at 04:41

What about the idea that these kinds of coffee shops are getting traction because Starbucks created this kind of market from the ground up in the first place (at least, that's part of their mythology)?

15~20 years ago, if people got coffee it was at a diner and it was black or some cream if you wanted to go a little crazy ... and you only got Italian-named coffee at Italian restaurants. And a few cafes to fuel late night studying by a university.

Now, post-Starbucks era, of course no coffee shop can get away without a few Italian-sounding brews and other niches this way and that. But choke Starbucks out and what happens? In the short term, yeah, mom and pop shops get more business. But can you promise that they themselves can sustaining the idea of "trendy coffee drinking"? No one can do it themselves; and collectively, well the whole point is they aren't a "collectively" ... that's what's winning them points now.

I just wonder, even if this article is perfectly true and it works out just the way you're hoping, if it still isn't a little premature to declare victory. If Starbucks goes down, what keeps trendy coffee going down with it, and then we're all back to black coffee in diners?

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 04:48

Trendy coffee is irrelevant, good coffee is what's important and good coffee has been around longer than Starbucks. Plus no one's declaring a large scale victory or any kind of sustained losses to Starbucks, just hopefully the turning of a tide.

I personally couldn't give two fucks about those fucking idiot hipsters drinking caramel macchiatos and talking about how reading The Catcher In The Rye changed their lives, but I'd rather they were doing it in a decent coffeeshop - even if I would have to listen to them.

Muzman on 31/1/2008 at 04:57

You can all come here. This situation might be the case, but it seems a little odd to me. As long as I can remember there have been take-out cafes and every resturaunt and many pubs had an espresso machine for making the usual suspects of flat white, latte, capuccino, macciatto. It's weird.
If anything Starbucks might have brought vaguely euro coffee habits to the bible belt and they'll never go back, even if Starbucks shrinks somewhat (I dunno though, are they big away from the coast? I have only South Park and that article to go on.)

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 04:59

demagogue obviously wasn't aware of the European trend that's been around for about a century called the "cafe culture". Italians and Frenchies were sitting on their arses in cafes drinking all kinds of coffee when America was still chewing its own arsehole.

demagogue on 31/1/2008 at 05:19

I guess I should have said trendy coffee "drinking". Of course good coffee has always been around ... But in the past, it was more of an event to have quality coffee, something you do on Sunday afternoon when you go into town, not something you could do just any afternoon. Isn't that what Starbucks changed by fueling the idea that quality coffee is something you should expect on a daily basis?

I mean, I think about other products like this ... cheese, meat, bread. In NYC, I've been spoiled by having specialty shops around, a cheesery, butcher, bakery, winery ... to get good quality food even on a daily basis. But these things aren't on a national scale like coffee. If I go back home to the Texan suburbs, we have good cheese maybe once in a bleu moon. But we still have quality coffee all the time, often at Starbucks but other places too (something we didn't do, BTW, before the 1990s). Choke away Starbucks, and it's just a premonition that coffee-drinking will become like cheese-eating is now and coffee drinking pre-90s.

I don't deny that there are places that have much better quality coffee than Starbucks, but it seems, once you get out of the cities, the idea of quality coffee drinking isn't something you can always take for granted on the scale it is now. Anyway, this is just my intuition.

Edit: well the connection is incredibly slow to get Ninja'd. Anyway:

Quote:

demagogue obviously wasn't aware of the European trend that's been around for about a century called the "cafe culture".

First of all, Hey! I spent a year living in Israel, two years in Korea and Japan, and about a year in Switzerland, and wrote a thesis on EU-US trade disputes over foodstuffs, which have more than a little to do with sharp differences in culinary culture ... so I know all about "cafe culture". That said, you're right, I was talking mostly from an American-centric perspective ... so it wasn't really meant as an attack on your point at all. Just consider it a qualification of your point as applied to the American context.

[edit: a little more to come, the connection is slow!]

Tocky on 31/1/2008 at 05:20

There is no Starbucks in Oxford Ms. Just Square Books where you can get a book and take your cup onto the balcony to read and watch traffic go round the old courthouse. I wish I could say it tastes like water from a mountain stream strained though misty morning goodness but it tastes like jungle armpit. I like it.

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 05:30

demagogue, you're a smart guy, so obviously you're aware of the European cafe culture. I was sarcasming.

And Tocky, obv I'm not saying HAY GUYS LOCAL COFFEE SHOPS SELL COFFEE THAT TASTES LIKE THE BEST SEX YOU'VE EVER HAD or even SUPPORT WORSE COFFEE SHOPS OVER STARBUCKS.
I'm saying good coffee >>> starbucks, if it's mediocre coffee probably still an easy call, but if it's shit versus shit, well, that plain sucks in general. I'd probably just drink a beer instead if I could.

Tocky on 31/1/2008 at 05:40

Actually I was saying I'll drink jungle armpit to keep this place just the way it is. Nobody will bother you if you want to make it Irish even, hell it's right next to where Faulkner used to piss (Faulkner alley). I love this place. If I could scare away the developers with a toothless grin I would pull my teeth and rape a dead dog.

Scots Taffer on 31/1/2008 at 05:43

Carry on.

demagogue on 31/1/2008 at 06:07

Quote Posted by Scots Taffer

I was sarcasming.

:o ah.

But sometimes I am surprised. When I first went to Japan, I could have predicted that "iced" tea is utterly unheard of, so I was expecting that reversal, but I didn't predict that most coffee would be iced, in the way that only Japanese can take a fad and make it an overnight religious institution.