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I'd be interested to see an update to this study in the coming years. Starbucks has been pivoting towards take out and mobile orders and removing tables and cha
by picardo 1y ago
I'd be interested to see an update to this study in the coming years. Starbucks has been pivoting towards take out and mobile orders and removing tables and chairs entirely from some of its stores lately.
- ghaff 1y agoI don't dispute that there may be a trend but a lot of Starbucks have long had pretty scanty seating--and certainly tables where you can reasonably meet and talk. And it can be fairly difficult to find a table at more traditional cafes/coffeeshops. So there's reasonable debate over whether a lot of coffeeshops are really third places.
- walterbell 1y ago> debate over whether a lot of coffeeshops are really third places What are some examples of real third places in major US cities?
- fireflash38 1y agoI've been seeing more breweries focusing on catering to parents of young children too by building playsets or having more child-friendly areas.
- padraic7a 1y agoPublic Libraries.
- sneak 1y agoThe third places in the United States are almost exclusively churches and bars. It’s sort of gross. As a teetotaling atheist, I moved to Berlin for the universities and night clubs, as there are tons of social events associated with both.
- picardo 1y agoAgreed on both points. In my middle age, I've even considered starting drinking again so that I may have a reason to go to the only place where people hang out in my neighborhood, which is obviously a bar. The one and only social activity that has saved me from this road so far has been a few meetup groups that I frequent.
- sneak 1y agoYou can hang out in a bar and not drink alcohol. Tell them to put your ginger ale in a rocks glass. As we get older it’s more important than ever to avoid alcohol. We don’t have the organ margin we used to. All that bullshit about “a glass of wine a day is good for you” was fake.
- picardo 1y agoI do that sometimes, but I get peer pressured into drinking alcohol if I socialize. You can't win. Agree with you about the benefits of avoiding alcohol.
- sneak 1y agoI don’t know how to put it nicely, so I’ll say it as plainly as I can: it is an essential life todo item to learn to resist peer pressure. It’s easier than it seems. If people can get you to do things you don’t want to do just by repeating things at you, that’s a you problem, and a big one. Also, separately, if the people you are hanging out with can’t take no for an answer, get better friends. Friends don’t pressure friends to poison themselves for camaraderie.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- scarface_74 1y agoI hang out at a bar downstairs in a resort area all of the time just to have casual conversations with random tourists who come in and the bartender who I’m friends with. I’m not a non drinker. But half the time I just get soda (free) or may have one drink. There is no pressure. I just tell people I come down to socialize - mostly with couples and guys who show up. I am married and no matter what it comes off as creepy to start conversations with women and often their husbands are around. Since I am friends with bartender and people see me talking to him and it’s obvious that we know each other , it doesn’t come off the wrong way.
- randycupertino 1y agoFor a lot of parents it's their kid's sports team events. At my local pool there are people who RV camp and grill during swim team events and the parents hang out all day, play spikeball, read, gossip, chill and otherwise hang out together while the kids compete in all-day competitions.
- tejohnso 1y agoProbably not popular, but I like board game cafés. You pay an hourly fee to play one of dozens of board games while also enjoying food and drink typical of a coffee shop. I think the public library should be a great third place. They should have board games and computers in addition to books, but they're often unsatisfactory in terms of variety, cleanliness, or proximity.
- walterbell 1y agoIf neighborhood entrepreneurs would benefit from seating, cities can require a minimum number of chairs per square foot, starting with a non-zero number to address US Starbucks locations that have removed all chairs.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoOr they can just get rid of Euclidean zoning and allow people to create small commercial enterprises in their actual neighborhoods so actual neighbors can easily spend time there.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- picardo 1y agoMixed use zoning is quite common in major American cities. It's much more complicated to implement than Euclidean zoning, though, so I assume it faces some adoption challenges in smaller cities.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoYeah it's mostly common in places where it has existed historically, and yeah there's been a new effort to reintroduce it. Euclidean zoning is the obvious thing to do if you're planning from a 30,000 foot view, but planning should be done at the level at which humans exist!
- potato3732842 1y agoMixed use zoning is better than not allowing it at all but almost always results in the activity simply not being economically profitable due to the other restrictions. The problem with that is that the "rich enough to have no real problems" people know that for every upscale coffee shop they like there will be five people doing heavier economic activity that they don't like and because they're the only ones with the free time to care they drive the conversation and they limit it to light consumer businesses which of course can't work because that hypothetical coffee shop or sandwich shop needs the foot traffic from all the other business (that doesn't exist, because it's not allowed) in order to actually turn a profit without insane prices. And so then nothing actually gets developed in the up-zoned area and it's still a glorified bedroom community. The people who could actually provide the political will for a proper removal or liberalization of the zoning don't get involved, because they all have other shit going on that's more important.
- yesfitz 1y agoThey had been! But in 2024, Brian Niccols pitched the "Back to Starbucks" plan, with point 3 of his 4 point focus being, "Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse."[1] He said, "Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between “to-go” and “for-here” service." Whether or not that's working is another story[2]. Long story short is that Scooters, Dutch Bros. and other brands are doing drive-thru better, and cafe attendance is down 22% since before the pandemic. Consumer tastes have shifted. And given Gen Z's preference for online interaction over in-person, I'm not sure if Starbucks will be able to steer the ship. If I were Starbucks, I'd strongly consider splitting the branding on the cafes and drive-thrus. Keep the Starbucks brand with the drive-thrus, then try opening a few new cafes as a new brand. Worst case scenario, you rebrand those cafes as Starbucks. I bet they've talked about it. 1: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/10/new-starbucks-ceo-brian-niccol-outlines-plans-for-business.html#:~:text=Reestablishing%20Starbucks%20as%20the%20community%20coffeehouse%3A https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/10/new-starbucks-ceo-brian-nicc... 2: https://intelligence.coffee/2025/05/back-to-starbucks-long-or-end-game/ https://intelligence.coffee/2025/05/back-to-starbucks-long-o...
- barbazoo 1y ago> "Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse." What a load of corporate bullshit. Unlike any other community coffee house, this one made almost $10b in profit last year. I wonder how much the "community" really benefits from this. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SBUX/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SBUX/financials/
- ethan_smith 1y agoThis pivot to takeout-focused stores could completely invert the study's findings, as the core mechanism of serendipitous encounters that drive entrepreneurship disappears when physical gathering spaces are eliminated.