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Unfortunately, Starbucks is opening “kiosk only” locations with no seating that, obviously, fail to function as a third place. My partner finished up a medical
by trollbridge 2y ago
Unfortunately, Starbucks is opening “kiosk only” locations with no seating that, obviously, fail to function as a third place. My partner finished up a medical appointment and was waiting for me to arrive, and decided to stop in Starbucks. Oops, just a kiosk. The options left for a “third place” was a petrol station that had seating and a grocery store.
Somehow I don’t think petrol station seating areas will promoting a huge amount of neighbourhood entrepreneurship. I would probably look at more independent, locally-owned kind of establishments—particularly that do have seating.
I can think of a lot of critical meetings that happened in these sort of coffee shops, including a first interview for the person who is now our staff software architect, the first meeting I had with my now-business partner where we went over her product idea (admittedly that was a Starbucks), getting together to hash out ideas to solve difficult problems, and best of all, a random chance encounter because we were in a third place. This is in places as diverse as small heartland American towns, NYC, Tel Aviv, or Pennsylvania’s rust belt.
Fewer of these places means fewer of these good things happening. I don’t need a kiosk; I have an espresso machine I can operate at home or in the office.
- lotsoweiners 2y ago> I don’t need a kiosk; I have an espresso machine I can operate at home or in the office. You would probably enjoy the experience of a small, locally owned coffee shop then. Starbucks is optimizing for their profit. In my suburban city, Starbucks has closed most or all locations that were a few miles from the freeway. They built new locations with drive throughs and very little to no seating within a few blocks of every freeway onramp. This tells you what they are optimizing for. Unfortunately, chances are encounters and warm fuzzies do not please the corporate overlords.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThe locally owned coffee shop is optimizing profits too, just going after a smaller, more niche demographic. Inversely, if everyone wanted cozy shops, that is exactly what Starbucks would build.
- nine_k 2y agoEveryone may be wanting cozy shops, large apartments, free ice cream, and a pony. Cozy shops bring in much less profit per $ invested. They cannot seriously compete with kiosks, when the majority of customers just want some competently brewed joe on the way to work (or even half-competently, since we mention Starbucks). Maybe a bagel with it. Next customer! A cozy shop with seating for customers who want to sit there and talk for an hour over a $3 cup of coffee each, cannot compete. It can maybe run as a lifestyle business by somebody who loves the craft and does not need much money. But not as an efficient business chain.
- griftrejection 2y ago[dead]
- riehwvfbk 2y agoTo deal with this, Europe has "anticafes" that charge for time spent by the hour and offer unlimited free coffee (hence the "anti" part).
- nine_k 2y agoAh, sounds a bit like that specific North American word... coworking? :)
- riehwvfbk 2y agoThat word also gets used, somewhat interchangeably (an anticafe will often also mention the word "coworking" in its description, but never the other way around). Coworking places tend to be more like offices with some startups renting permanent spaces and some people dropping in for a day of work. They tend to have real desks and phone booths. Anticafes tend to be more like community spaces with cafe seating, board games galore, and maybe some cats. Both are filled with people on their laptops :)
- 2y ago
- explaininjs 2y agoIn LA, every small locally owned coffee shop has become totally overrun with folks buying one latte and proceeding to take a whole table to themselves and their laptops for the next 5 hours.
- griftrejection 2y agoAre the owners not enforcing time limits or drink minimums?
- Suppafly 2y ago>every small locally owned coffee shop has become totally overrun with folks buying one latte and proceeding to take a whole table to themselves and their laptops for the next 5 hours. That's what a third place is and what people are lamenting the lack of now.
- explaininjs 2y agoNo, that’s what a second place is. A third place is for socialization, a second place is for work. Just because you’re relying on some independent small business owner to pay rent for your desk while you prevent other customers from patronizing the establishment and don’t talk to anyone, doesn’t make it a third place.
- Terr_ 2y agoAgreed, but with a caveat: It goes back into "third place" territory if they're engrossed in a laptop-hobby rather than laptop-employment, even though many of the external favors are identical.
- niemandhier 2y agoThere are solutions for this. In Italy they charge you for the seat. I have been to places where they charge for a laptop too. In addition you can minimize cellular network reception and charge for wifi.
- 2y ago
- andai 2y agoIt appears they have optimized a decent metric (profit) to such a degree that it starts doing harm.
- kumarm 2y ago>> Starbucks is optimizing for their profit. Are we shocked businesses are optimizing for their profit? Isn't that their purpose?
- throwaway173738 2y agoCorporations were originally for some public benefit. It’s only recently that profit has become their sole aim.
- nine_k 2y agoWhen were corporations for public benefit? Even medieval corporations were for the benefit of the participants, and only tangentially the public at large.
- p_j_w 2y agoIf they're meant to serve no public benefit then perhaps they should be stripped of the legal protections they enjoy.
- nine_k 2y agoWhat kind of legal protections do you think should go? BTW, say, your bedroom serves no public benefit; its point is to provide you some highly private benefits. Is it bad? I'd say that any activity is fine, as long as it does not result in or intended for public harm. Providing a public benefit should be strictly optional; paying taxes should be enough.
- p_j_w 2y ago>What kind of legal protections do you think should go? Shielding people from liability is a good start. >BTW, say, your bedroom serves no public benefit; its point is to provide you some highly private benefits. Is it bad? I can't commit crimes in my bedroom and escape any and all responsibility for it.
- anovikov 2y agoEvery business is optimised for profit. This is why they exist. Difference is that Starbucks probably can be profitable operating as a kiosk but a mom and pop store can't because it lacks brand value.
- fragmede 2y agoNot necessarily. For now, every business is run by a human being, not AI, so all of the small mom and pop businesses optimize for the whims of the businesses owner. Got that one vendor with the sales person that they like more than the other vendor's because they were rude? Guess who's winning the contract with no oversight? Mom or pop tired today? They're not optimizing for profit, they're taking a nap. Mom feel bad for the customer who's pregnant and who's partner left them? She's not optimizing for profit when she undercharges them on lunch and dinner and breakfast. Businesses everyone recognizes by name aren't run that way because the layers of capitalism serve to isolate people from the human aspect of their decisions, but there are a lot of businesses that people have never heard of.
- anovikov 2y agoIf so, it is natural that those businesses go under.
- BoredPositron 2y agoOver optimized corps are usually going down sooner or later. Look at Bell or at the living corpses of IBM, Oracle and Boeing. The problem is they are getting propped up by governments around the globe and their fear of impeding doom if their old supplier shits the bed.
- listenallyall 2y agoLol - replaced by even bigger megacorps. Google, Microsoft, Nvidia.
- throwaway173738 2y ago
- crooked-v 2y agoAt this point, I feel like that kind of thing is an obvious consequence of, among other issues, most of the US going straight to "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" when it comes to mental health issues and the homeless.
- griftrejection 2y ago[dead]
- Animats 2y ago> Unfortunately, Starbucks is opening “kiosk only” locations with no seating that, obviously, fail to function as a third place. And when they convert an existing location to kiosk only, the prices do not go down. There are two Starbucks locations in downtown Redwood City, about 250m apart. The one on the right side of the tracks has comfortable seating and tables. The one on the wrong side of the tracks, in the dying mall near the homeless camp, is kiosk only. Same prices.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ferret7446 2y agoIt may be that they converted the location to kiosk to avoid raising the prices, given that California recently raised their operating costs by a significant amount. So the prices did go down in a sense.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI've been protesting the loss of starbucks seating in my grocery store by just making some seating out of whatever product is on display at that time. I haven't run into any entrepreneurs yet, but the community is amused.