Starbucks Has Lost Its Damn Mind
Adventures in missing the point
My local Starbucks just spent a buttload of money doing the remodel shown above. Yes, it’s finished. They permanently removed the tables and chairs. There’s not even a menu board. It is intentionally devoid of ambiance. There wasn’t even any music playing. The store lost its soul.
I love coffee shops. They can be a community hub, a place for poetry readings, a place to read or work and chill with an old friend — or meet a new one.
Somehow, Starbucks has concluded that we are so content with paying seven or eight bucks for a cup of coffee that we will be okay with robotic beverage delivery. Welcome to the future of an AI world where humanity is irrelevant except as a consumer. All that matters is the product and how it can raise revenue for the company’s investors.
I hope this fails spectacularly and predict it will.
Case in point: Barnes and Noble. It went public in the 1990s and slowly built up its mega-store identity. Hundreds of big box bookstores were built, which devastated small boutique bookstores nationwide. The books which were offered were selected corporately for every store. The big six publishers paid for prominent placement of the books they wanted to push.
