The Narrative of Starbucks
Who wouldn’t want to take an overpriced cup of coffee in an overcrowded joint full of people you don’t even like with limited wifi? Starbucks has managed to trick us into believing it’s a place far different from a McDonald’s by bending the narrative in front of their operations.
Starbucks has taken elements that define what a homely experience is and stripped them in their benefit in order to industrialize the act of having a cup of coffee without us noticing. This strategy consists of very specific actions regarding operations and aesthetics.
First of all, going to Starbucks is nothing like going to a regular coffee shop. In a coffee shop you sit, someone takes your order and serves you. Here in the best fast-food fashion you’re told to stand in line and wait for your order. How do they humanize this? They ask you for your name. This is a simple operational detail, but in most people subconscious it’s enough for them to not feel neglected and create a fictional bond with the waiter through his handwriting and incorrect spelling.
Then the aesthetics of the place. Nothing in Starbucks says “stay for hours”, on the contrary, when these places are full they’re just as unbearable and loud as any McDonald’s. Even the wifi connection they give you is limited. And who wants shared wifi for 15 minutes if not tourists? The entire illusion of going to a Starbucks to write a screenplay is expensive and counter productive.
The thing is, each Starbucks is decorated in a rural kind of way with furry rugs, fireplaces and cobblestone walls but they have uncomfortable tall seats and they serve you everything in cardboard cups that you associate with a takeaway drink. Not a place to stay if you ask your grandma.
All these contradictions make us hate the people that go there (hipsters, poets and cat lovers) because we see them as the problem, whereas we do flat-out hate McDonald’s. This happens because we can’t hate cobblestone walls, fireplaces and people doing their best not to misspell your name. Plus, they name the sizes of their drinks in different Mediterrenean languages, this can only be the product of pure craftsmanship.
It’s an illusion.
When we think of coffee (not only crappy coffee) Starbucks always rises as an option because of its ubiquity. They’re everywhere and they do have at their barebones the particular elements you’re looking for when in the hunt of a cup of coffee: coffee and it looks like a coffee shop you might enjoy. Yet you get there and feel the necessity to leave almost immediately because the coffee sucks, you feel annoyed and hate everyone.
Then in the words of Agent Smith: why do you persist? You want coffee. At its nature, Starbucks is a unified experience that covers a very universal necessity in occidental society, and its industrialization is what makes it the juggernaut of hot drinks that is today. They might not keep it real, but they will keep you awake for the first half of the morning.
Starbucks it’s a coffee shop just as much as McDonald’s is a restaurant.
Originally published at www.invisiblebridg.es.
