from Truthdig:
The Starbucks Economy Posted on Jul 23, 2008
By Marie Cocco
I’m not one to take lightly the loss of 12,000 jobs, especially when they come with good benefits such as health insurance and vacations for part-timers. Still, I’m finding it hard to suppress a bit of smugness over the downsizing of Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee chain that put the word latte on everyone’s lips.
By next week, the first of 600 stores Starbucks intends to close will be shuttered, a shrinkage necessitated by a drop in profits and an overall drift of purpose that seems to have thrown the company into the type of identity crisis some of its patrons try to work out while lounging at the cafe. My irritation is directed at neither the company’s management nor its employees, but at the Starbucks culture. It’s always annoyed the heck out of me.
Starbucks seems to be a place that carries a whiff of excess. In its own way, it has a lot in common with SUVs, hot tubs and television screens wide enough to fill a wall. That is, it represents the bit-by-bit extravagances that helped get us into the tight economic jam we find ourselves in today.
I never did develop the Starbucks habit, an addiction that can cost otherwise levelheaded people $25 or more per week. Years ago, I remember shocking a colleague when I told him I walked across street each morning to get coffee at a shop where the basic brew was a dime less than a comparable cup at the Starbucks just an elevator ride down from my office. I could have easily afforded the 50 cents extra per workweek, but what was the point? A brewed coffee was a brewed coffee. And since neither Starbucks espresso nor its various versions of “latte” bear much resemblance to the real things I’ve consumed in Italy (or even growing up in an Italian-American neighborhood), I never much cared for them. Eventually, I gave up buying coffee from a shop altogether. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But the list of stores Starbucks is closing is a revelation. It shows that the company expanded to byways of America where I have no doubt that a decade ago, few would have deliberated the purchase of an expensive coffee, let alone an oddly named beverage. Take, for example, the store that is about to go dark in Triadelphia, W.Va.
That’s near Wheeling, in the heart of an old steel and coal region that has struggled economically for what seems an eternity. “We haven’t had retail
in our county for 30 or 40 years now,” says Greg Stewart, the development director for Ohio County. ......(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080723_the_starbucks_economy/
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