guest column / by rose habib
How Many Starbucks Is Enough?
By Guest Writer, Guest Writer, 4-04-06
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By Rose Habib, Owner of the Raven Cafe
Contrary to the Missoulian editor’s opinion, the angst surrounding the opening of a downtown Starbucks is more than just a fashion statement amongst the "local intelligentsia." It is a very real threat to the local coffee shops AND the loyal customers who frequent them.
Many of these stores opened in the tight downtown market under the mistaken assumption that the Missoula Downtown Association, or MDA, was shielding them from the bottomless pockets of national chain stores. The goal of the MDA was to create a uniquely Missoulian business district. What happened?
While I agree that many small, independently owned espresso shops in America may owe their origin to Starbucks; I would argue that Starbucks, like many corporations, sold its soul on the route to ubiquity. Starbucks coffee has become a symbol of consistent mediocrity. No longer educating the public about coffee, they actually brew mass misconceptions about coffee and espresso (i.e. the caramel ‘macchiato’).
The downtown Missoula coffee market is more than saturated. There is a place to buy an espresso drink on EVERY single block of the downtown business district. The impending arrival of City Brew (with its Orange Street, interstate-friendly drive-thru) and downtown Starbucks are further pressuring an already pressurized market, hence the predatory practices which bring up the strong revulsion of Starbucks. There is not an open market for espresso downtown. Starbucks is not providing something which is uniquely Missoulian or uniquely Montanan, like the rest of the downtown businesses. It will not draw tourists from other areas to downtown. While each coffee retailer has its own loyal customers who would never darken the door of a Starbucks, that’s not the customer base they are worried about. Downtown Missoula greatly relies on the summer tourist dollar. Coffee is of great comfort to the traveler. Before, a downtown tourist would have been obligated to take a chance on a local coffeehouse. Now the siren song of the "consistent yet mediocre" mermaid will be beckoning on North Higgins.
These are not customers who have the time or inclination to experiment with some local flavor. These customers have one shot to buy coffee downtown before they leave. A national name and familiarity is NOT something the local retailer can compete with.
Starbucks has been opening more than one new store each day, every day, for the past 7 years. Their presence downtown is not wanted or necessary. In the end, what I really want to know is: How many Starbucks stores is enough??
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Comments
The recent (past 5 years) influx of rich yuppies to Missoula is what Starbucks is serving. If these newly minted Yuppie Transplants reflect what Missoula is or will be, it's time to either draw the battle lines or simply give up and let Missoula become Boulder.
Among the people I've known in the time I've lived here (10 years) I can't count but a single one person who likes Starbucks. That person defends Starbucks on the simple principle that "Starbucks coffee is better than Conoco coffee". Well, if such lowest-common-denominator analysis should win the day, we can simply order all the locally owned and locally-oriented businesses to leave town for some pabulum merchants who will sell more of the same strip-mall food that pseudo-Missoulians love to buy.
Marisa sounds like she fell in love with big city bogus life, and needs to return to it. Sorry, Marisa, but some of us like Missoula for its individuality. Starbucks is another nail in the coffin of individuality. The coffin was built first by the Lambros Family when it built Southgate Mall. Then the Reserve Street Box Store Hell added the cozy velour interior.
Now, with 6 Starbucks locations built over a 3 year period, Starbucks is nailing the lid shut.
Welcome to the death of Missoula. Thanks for hastening it, Marisa.
Marisa likes Starbucks once in awhile, and they are good to their employees, there's no denying that. In a town where I've already worked for one local business that had trouble even PAYING its employees for the hours they worked, a place that offers benefits to entry-level types is a breath of fresh air.
And it is consistent, which is more than I can say for at least two local coffee places I've been to recently. Consistently mediocre, maybe, but consistently clean, un-intimidating and non-surly as well, and that matters to me when I'm going to spend 15 minutes in a place consuming their product. I don't need to take the "How Missoula are you?" quiz any more often than I already do.
No retail establishment will ever kill Missoula unless people shop there. Don't blame the business.
I'm not sure where you get your thinking on consumer buying habits... nor your thinking on what causes a business to close. slow attrition is as deadly to a Missoula business as a wholesale stoppage.
as to the rest of your post, I don't know where you are going with that "Missoulian test," I"m only talking about those whom I've known in 10 years. but I would guess that you are a yuppie who felt offended by my observations, or you enjoy Starbucks coffee for other reasons.
if you think that market saturation cannot successfully drive out small business competition, you are either quite naive, or you are stupid.
your choice.
Pine & Higgins (former Bike Doctor)
South & Reserve (ShopKo parking lot)
South Hills Albertsons
Grant Creek Road & US 90
Safeway at south end of town
and one other grocery store location that I don't recall... either a Safeway or an Albertsons.
as to their employees, there is more to quality of life than whether an employee is paid well.
your oversimple view of "benign market capitalism" reeks of naivete. I'm voting that you're naive, and not stupid. but I could be wrong, you might be quite dim.
but I guess none of that matters if you feel "prestigiously satisfied" at your upscale choice of shops.
thanks for telling me that Boulder and Seattle is what Missoula should become. thanks a whole lot. now how about you go back to your idolized "big city" and take Marisa and the other Yuppies with you?
I'm not being naive nor do I profess any belief in "benign capitalism" there's no such thing, any more than there is benign gravity. Sure, market saturation can and will drive competitors out of business. I'm not saying Starbucks won't outcompete anybody, I just haven't seen it happen yet in Missoula. I haven't seen patrons of the Break et al. moving next door en masse. As far as the concept brought up in the article about needing to capture the "Tourist Dollar" in the summer, that is so weak. Capture the student dollar (13,500 here for 9-10 months out of the year, last I checked) The "tourist season" pales by comparison.
There's a lot more to quality of life than a decent wage or health care, but coffee at the Raven or the Break is just as unobtainable as coffee at Starbucks when you don't have a decent wage or when your unisured ass ends up in the hospital. Face it folks, coffee is a LUXURY item. I've gone without seeing the inside of a coffee joint for moths at a time when I was broke. Not so for a grocery store.
Last I checked, cups at the Break were just as papery as those at Starbucks, and Starbucks was just as willing to top up your personal mug as the Break was.
Actually, I think the best thing that could happen to Missoula would be if folks here would realize what is special about the place, but then equally, travel around a bit and see how much Missoula has in COMMON with lots of other small cities, and where Missoula falls far short of other cities its size as well, in areas such as housing affordibility, living wage, diversity, etc. Want pretentious- give me any business with "Missoula" in the name that likes to bank on the "uniqueness factor" of Missoula.
Try this- Listen to the Trail for a day "a radio station as unique as Missoula" OK, now fire up your ITunes and listen to WMVY- that mvyradio under the "eclectic" menu header. Listen for a day, and tell me how different the playlist is- that's right, Ted Kennedy's ritzy playland listens to the same music as Missoula!
Missoula is not as unique as it thinks it is, and therein lies the problem. Missoula thinks it is too good for Starbucks, and deserves comeuppance for its collective snobbery in that regard.
Missoula: not rural anymore but scared as hell to be urban.
I suggest you move to your urban nirvana and stop cheering the paving and malling of Missoula... there are thousands of urban "nirvanas" of the sort you want Missoula to become. why can't you and Starbucks and every other pretentious, Blackberry and cell phone in public using, SUV driving, highfalutin' attitude havin' pretentious fools get the phoque out of here and go somewhere that welcomes you, huh? why do you need to convert Missoula to your version of nirvana? why can't you leave it alone?
as to the rest of your silly pseudo-professorial tripe... there are more independent coffee places besides Break Espresso and The Raven. and if you got "attitude" at any of them, I submit it's YOUR attitude that they sensed... maybe you were wearing too much Abercrombie and Fitch or Ralph Lauren or whatever you Yuppies are into these days. maybe you drove up in your Saab or Beemer or Benz or Hummer and expected them to roll out the red carpet for you. maybe you think that because of your income and "urbane aura" and Yuppie patina, they should have recognized your superiority, bowed down and genuflected, and served you before anyone else, before their regular customers who've been supporting them since they opened, etc.
Missoula is not "scared" to be urban... but long time Missoulians who like Missoula without the pretense are DISGUSTED with attitudes such as yours, and that more than anything explains the "attitude" you got at any place besides Starbucks. Starbucks employees HAVE to be faux-polite, or they lose their jobs. Independent businesses can choose to snub yuppie poseurs, and I applaud them for so doing.
Get thee to Boulder, cell phone implanter.
your denigration and then criticism of "ad hominem" reveals your rank hypocrisy. again, how about you explain why Missoula "is not unique"?
the only way you could say that is to be one of those stupid yuppie troggo jagoffs who spend all their time in the office or in a yuppie "upscale eatery". anyone who has a life outside work and yuppie posing knows what makes Missoula unique. it's really no mystery.
you're a troll. a piece of yuppie coprolitic detritus. get the phoque out of this town. take your Star#ucks lovin' friends with you. take your ugly attitude with you. and please, take your cell phone and SUV with you.
Ok, well, as someone who lives in Boulder, I feel like I should be offended. But then again, I've only lived here for a few months, so I guess it's not that important. I've never been to Missoula, but I've been to plenty of local coffee shops that are slowly being defeated by Starbucks. I think the bottom line is, it's scary for business owners striving to create a unique and location-specific atmosphere to watch a mega-chain like Starbucks come in and steal business without even trying. That's what Independent Business Alliances are for though--they offer incentives to buy local, and they publicize the importance of local dollars going to local businesses. There's no question, I think, that Starbucks hurts local business. The question should be, how can they turn that around?
And just to weigh in (I can't resist) on the surliness and snobbery that sometimes (SOMETIMES, don't flame me for a conditional please) accompanies service at a indie coffee shop--I have experienced it myself. And I don't have a Beemer. Hell, even when I had dreadlocks, it happens. That's what you get when you underpay and overwork employees. Nothing to do with local vs. national.
To me all coffee shop coffee is too expensive, I just make my own the way I like it.
One of my acquaintances and her neighbors in San Francisco (I'll be moving back to Missoula soon) managed to keep a Starbucks from going up in their neighborhood here by protesting and haggling the Board of Supervisors. The anti-Starbucks movement is huge here, as I'm sure you can imagine. The amount of press this received for one boggles my mind. We live in an elite society that buries African genocides on the back page and puts a successful campaign against corporate gourmet coffee on the front page.
Second, you might notice around here that the "hip" people generally staff the local independent coffee shops, with the most cutting edge music in the background and a general ambiance that is pleasing to an elite class. Starbucks meanwhile, appears corporate like a strip mall establishment, and staffs people on the lowest economic rung who, incidentally, happen to generally be minorities in this city. So, to sum it up, what you end up having here is a bunch of rich white yuppies who don't want a Starbucks on their block protesting against the only place around who would employ most of these people (who are mostly minorities). Sometimes it's scary to see what people don't notice on the cover of the Chronicle.
Missoula has it's minority "class" if not ethnic diversity. If you go to a Starbucks you'll probably see some of them working there. They also work on North Reserve and Brooks St.
As for "urban nirvana" Missoula offers exactly that and you can't argue with it. As long as Montana is glorified as the "last best place", people will want to come. If you don't like it, viscera, you can move to a quieter little town on the highline, somewhere Starbucks will never, ever go.
It doesn't make a difference if starbucks is in town or not. They don't serve good coffee. I've "studied" coffee these last few years more than I studied in college. I take vacations to Seattle just for coffee vacations and can say with certainty that the only coffee shop here that could compete over there is the Raven. Other shops...Break, Le Petit, can throw out a good shot now and again, but can't do it over and over. It's the people that make the coffee as well...and they don't seem to care as much. Others, Liquid Planet - I'm talking to you, can claim they have good coffee, but you might as well be drinking motor oil. It's that bad....time and time again.
So it makes no difference whether it's a Starcrack or Pony Espresso, if you really want good coffee, it's the Raven. But you better hurry, they close in a week.