Desktops and printers in coffee shops? Starbucks Korea tells customers to 그만 해 Take a look at the internet of decades past, and you'll find plenty of jokes about bringing a desktop computer to a coffee shop. For South Korean Starbucks stores, however, that old-time meme is anything but in the past. The Korea Herald reported last week that Starbucks stores in the country had introduced a ban on …
"Starbucks remains committed to being a welcoming third place for coffee and connection, and where community thrives in every cup, every conversation, and every visit."
I've always wondered how they can make coffee so badly. It's from the staff throwing up in your cup after reading this kind of stuff from corp HQ.
>> I have never understood how Starbucks became so big.
Americans will buy anything. Starbucks is universally corporate drab.
Perhaps the coffee snobs don't know what they are drinking. I'm sure they know all the terms, where all the beans come from, and so on. But... American cuisine. McDonald's is referred to as a restaurant. Mars bars in the USA tasted like crap when I was there. They are not the same as Mars bars in the UK. However Peter Paul almond joys are very tasty.
For those of you too young to remember the alfresco dining experience in the UK before chains.
A cafe would have an urn of tea, containing a large number of tea bags, more boiling water would be added during the day.
If you were some sort of effete social dandy you could order coffee - and an ancient tin of Mellow Birds would be found under the counter, anda half teaspoon would be grudgingly added to a tea cup
Ordering a burger meant taking your life into your hands by eating whatever grey frozen thing the COOP had on offer that week
There was a relatively brief burgeoning of coffee culture in the UK - particularly around Soho in London - in the 1950s, coinciding with the emergence of the teenager market. Coffee shops had actual espresso machines and often elaborate decor as well as novelties such as glass cups and saucers. They also made it to the provinces, often where there were established Italian businesses serving food or ice cream. Some of the establishments were surprisingly large. They persisted well into the 60s - I remember going to Notarianni's Bis-Bar as a child in Sunderland where it was considered the height of modern sophistication.
Once the novelty had worn off, though, we seemed all to go back to tea and Nescafé.
Starbucks, however, is responsible for my abiding memory of America: the acrid smell of burnt coffee emanating from one of their Washington outlets that spread over two blocks.
For those of you too young to remember the alfresco dining experience in the UK before chains.
A cafe would have an urn of tea, containing a large number of tea bags, more boiling water would be added during the day.
As a child of the 80s I don't really remember before chains and growing up in Northern Ireland little dining was alfresco. However, the urn of tea description was definitely not accurate for that era, tea would be brought (as it still is in many independent places and hotels) in a one or two person pot with actual boiling water added to the appropriate number of teabags. A second pot of hot water with no teabags to allow topping up was not universal, but pretty common (otherwise a waitress or waiter would often stop by later to offer one). The chain experience is pretty universally hot (but not boiling) water poured into a cup and a miserable teabag on a string added (usually in that order).
In the 90's before Starbucks really took off in most of the UK, it was pretty common to be able to get espresso based drinks in nicer cafes, although most would have some kind of drip machine and while that might generally continue to boil the coffee after production it's not really a big problem during a busy period when it would come fresh, individual or two person cafetieres to the table were also not uncommon. Particularly noteable, and something that disappeared for a long time under the big coffee chains (and which has only really come back in independent shops, while chains offer a nod to it as an extra alongside vanilla syrup), there was often a choice of coffees, although in the Whittards sense of Kenya, Columbia, Brasil etc. (Particular memory of trying to persuade someone at university that this was actually different coffee in a way that cappuccino, latte, moka were not.)
> A cafe would have an urn of tea
Proper builders tea that is mate. Puts hair on your chest and built an empire that did. Just the job to wash down a full fry up with back pudding (and with a slice of Lorne sausage and bit of haggis for them north of the boarder).
> If you were some sort of effete social dandy
If I want owt fancy, I'll go to a proper tea room for home made sandwiches, scones, cakes and a selection of teas. All tasty and brewed properly, unlike the shite tea you get in American coffee chains. Unfortunately, finding a tea room in London is now nigh on impossible as only the chains can afford the rents. Elsewhere in Blighty, the tea room is alive and well.
My grandparents liked good coffee. They'd buy beans and grind it themselves. I always loved going to visit as a kid and enjoying their seriously strong and tasty coffee. Unfortunately this love of coffee skipped a generation and my mum would buy cheap Sainsbury's own brand instant coffee, and I'd question her as to why our coffee wasn't as good as grandpa's. But even she would draw the line at Mellow Birds.
I've never tasted it, but can only barely imagine how bad it must be if even my mum won't drink it.
I do have a soft spot for Mellow Birds.
Unfortunately, all the freeze dried coffee types send me straight to migraineville.
Dunno why - espresso coffee and all the derivatives thereof don't have the same effect. Drip percolators *sometimes* do - I suspect it's to do with how long the water is in contact with the grounds.
I have about 5 shots of coffee a day. I'm now one of those people that can drink a doppio espresso just before bed and then get a sound nights sleep!
If you were some sort of effete social dandy you could order coffee
Many years ago some friend and I were riding round South Wales and decided to stop for coffee.. We duly ordered (the two Dutch guys and I happy to have it as it comes which, in those days, was milk heated in a microwave with a slug of coffee put in from the pot that had been sitting there since opening time - as it ran out, they just stuck it under the percolator and added more.. The Dutch guys were happy because, if the coffee was any stronger, it would have dissolved the spoon and the coffee pot..).
The other English guy got his and said "could I have black coffee please?". He got a frosty reply "that's how we drink coffee round here" from the old matron behind the counter.
One of the younger women hastened to get Nick his black coffee then let loose on the older lady in Welsh. The few words I caught were along the lines of "you serve customers what *they* want, not what *you* want".
(I speak very little Welsh..)
Starbucks started there, and there was a pretty sophisticated coffee culture, but they steamrollered it by being good at corporate expansion.
Something that lodged in my memory long ago was from a little book of case studies handed out by some group of management consultants at a graduate careers event (I suspect it was BCG, but could have been any of them). One of those was Starbucks, and analysed the strategy of saturating an area with their shops until any local competition was driven out of business simply by swallowing up all the clientele through the statistical effect of anyone trying to find a coffee shop: a. being likely to find a starbucks first, b. having trouble finding one that wasn't a starbucks.
That this was supposed to be clever probably started me down the path of not going into management consultancy.
Probably where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Shoe Event Horizon:
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon
"...where the only type of store economically viable to build is a shoe shop. At this point, society ceases to function, and the economy collapses, sending a world spiralling into ruin."
One of those was Starbucks, and analysed the strategy of saturating an area with their shops until any local competition was driven out of business simply by swallowing up all the clientele through the statistical effect of anyone trying to find a coffee shop
Ah - the Walmart technique:
Move into an area, build lots of stores that can undercut all the local shops. Wait until all the local stores have gone out of business then close most of the stores to save money.
End result is that, in a lot of places, Walmart pretty much was a monopoly. No idea if that's still the case with internet shopping!
Around here in Argentina people using anything bigger that a smartphone in a coffee shop is seen as an idiot that is basically asking to be robbed.
Things have got so bad many parents do not allow kids to take smartphones, tablets or laptops to school so they don't get stolen when the kids are about to enter school or when they leave it.
Several schools are considered that maybe the government issued laptops and Chromebooks should just stay in school and not be taken home by the kids.
If you go out to eat at night, the excuse of "I didn't bring my smartphone so it doesn't get stolen" is accepted as valid and they do give you a menu to read instead of having to deal with QR codes, the offline menus just usually don't the prices on them.
Our bank has closed its nearest branch, requiring us to use online banking. Mr C senior wanted to know how to do it (no smartphone but can use the web). The bank couldn't show him unless he took his device in with him. Would've needed to take desktop PC and monitor in. And probably the interweb connection too.
He's still having trouble with it. We try and help, but their instructions are shit and their helpdesk is clueless. It's caused him more stress than Covid did.
Recently visited a friend in Oregon and she mentioned how she noticed how the people there made much more use of those "third spaces" that weren't home or work, and for the most part it was nice. The next day however we went to a brewpub and the best table was taken up by a grubby person and his dog. We could not decide if he was a customer that had stayed there a while or if he was homeless.
Every culture will have their own relationship with the unhoused, and so the use of third spaces will be highly interrelated with that.
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