Starbucks built its brand on being a third place.Mr Oldenburg, being a sociologist, had to say something stupid about Normals. “The beer joint in which the middle class American takes no pride can be as much a third place as the proud Viennese coffeehouse.” But I digress. Let's get to the E-T-T-S moments.
“It never really was about the coffee to me with Starbucks,” Matt Dollinger wrote for Fast Company in 2008. “When I think about Starbucks, I think about Comfy Chairs, Great Smells, Pretty People and WiFi.”
The company prided itself on being a hideaway between home and work, even billing itself as the “world’s conference room.” Its ambiance was a far cry from competitors like Dunkin’ Donuts. Everything from the dim lighting to the plush armchairs, the earth-toned color scheme and even the ceiling height conspired to maximize what the company’s representatives called the “Starbucks experience.” For Dollinger — and millions of consumers — the “experience” made the detour worth it, even if Dunkin’s coffee was a little better and nearly $1 cheaper.
Rounded tables were as much an aesthetic choice as they were a means of encouraging conversation between coffee drinkers. The store playlists were an invitation to linger. It was as if the company’s handbook was [sociologist Ray] Oldenburg’s criteria for a third place.
When every other fast food establishment was expanding its drive-thru offerings in the late 1980s and '90s, Starbucks resisted. “We don’t want to become just another commodity product,” the company’s finance chief said in a 1995 profile. “The drive-thrus are a way for the converted to get their coffee a little quicker. It’s not the way we want people to discover the Starbucks experience.”You might deny that your company offers a "commodity product." Whenever you offer something for sale with the expectation of harvesting a profit, you are engaging in the exchange of commodities. In the case of Starbucks, the target clientele was people of means, who might have had high opportunity costs of their time. And, thus, the sort of walk-in trade that works on a culture studies paper or plots with fellow wokies to overthrow the government isn't making much use of those round-end tables and lounge chairs.
Yet, by 2022, Starbucks appeared to have scrapped the “Starbucks experience” entirely. Across the country, cozy lounge chairs were replaced with metal stools — where seating wasn’t done away with altogether. Bathrooms, outlets and tables also disappeared. The company even departed from its 1990s ethos and promised to outfit 90% of new locations with “state-of-the-art” drive-thrus. Even New York City, of all places, has Starbucks drive-thrus now.
Some changes were pandemic-necessitated adaptations that were never reversed, while others were a response to new norms. According to the company, most purchases are made through its mobile app, the majority of drinks ordered are cold, and apparently, people just don’t want to sit inside a Starbucks as much anymore.Perhaps that was an improvement over the sort of studied indolence that used to greet walk-in customers. High time value and all that. I'm not going to get into the spats over whether the panhandlers linger too long in the urban Starbucks and shoot up in the bathrooms. I will note that one of those suburban outlets I sometimes call at, located in stroad hell at Randall and Stearns, recently very much reduced its indoor dining area and augmented its drive-through, while the campus outlet is still in its older configuration (never had any comfy chairs) and the collegians do use it as a study hall.
Yet, this isn’t simply a company adjusting its business model to reflect consumer trends. The brand is still holding onto its legacy as a third place, going so far as to redefine the third place as a feeling rather than a physical space:
“The Third Place has never been defined solely by a physical space, it’s also the feeling of warmth, connection, a sense of belonging,” a press release stated. “Digital technology is helping augment and extend that feeling of connection with customers — whether they are in Starbucks stores, in their cars, on their doorsteps.”
Part of “reimagining the third place,” as Starbucks described it, involved investing $450 million into new coffee-making equipment and a better mobile ordering system. The focus of both upgrades was to speed up the drink-making process at drive-thru locations. Efficiency was core to this new feeling, as was suburban expansion.
Even if a third place is more than just a physical space, it’s difficult to see what any of these upgrades have to do with it.
It’d be one thing if the company kept the locations long beloved for their ample seating, WiFi and culture while increasing suburban options. However, that’s not the case. Since 2020, Starbucks has set out to close 400 of these centrally located stores, the bulk of which patrons could access by foot. It reduced and removed seating from the few remaining urban locations. Its leaders claimed that nobody wanted to sit in a Starbucks anymore, and they made sure that nobody ever would.
In reimagining the third place, Starbucks has removed all the hallmarks of one. The Starbucks where you studied for finals with your classmates, recovered from that awkward first date, won a chess match and took that job interview no longer exists. It’s now a conveyor belt where speed rules and the ideal customer experience is spending as little time in the store as possible. “Next!”
Elsewhere, well, perhaps Ms Mieleszko misses the five-stool corner taverns of the Burnham Street neighborhood of Milwaukee. "In the end, maybe it’s not that fewer people want to sit inside a Starbucks; maybe it’s that Starbucks wants fewer people sitting inside." Those other hangouts will emerge.
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