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Would you like guilt with your coffee, sir?

Given the global prominence of this brand, I find it quite surprising that only now are Starbucks about to open their first branch in Paris:

When Disney arrived with its theme park they called it a cultural Chernobyl. Many Parisians will view as an even bigger disaster the opening today of the city’s first branch of Starbucks.

Six years after it served up the first decaf cappucino in Europe, the Seattle-based global coffee giant is ready to take on the nation that invented café society.

They better hire some burly security guards as well. If they manage to get through the first month without succumbing to a Jose Bove-led sit-in protest they will be able to consider themselves fortunate.

Despite the global success, purists are predicting that in France, where ordering an express (often consumed with a cigarette) is a sacred tradition, the brand will flop. Bernard Quartier, spokesman for the organisation that represents French café owners said: “I don’t believe this concept is going to work because nothing can replace the conviviality and sociability of the French café.”

Now this is a different matter. If Starbucks fails to ignite the interest of the Parisians then so be it. The market rules and, in as much as he is basing his dismissal on his understanding of local market conditions, then Monsieur Quartier has got a point.

After all, if your idea of a good night out is lashings of Sartre and dollops of Foucault washed down with litres of bitter café noir and a lungful of Gitanes then the child-friendly play areas and sanitised chirpiness of Starbucks is probably not for you. I must say, though, that I like Starbucks coffee and, yes, I do buy it from time to time and I also support their right to conduct their business in any way that see fit. But, let’s face it, it is a very uncafé-like operation. If you were a morose left-bank intellectual would you really want to spend an evening gazing into the abyss under a blanket no-smoking ban and bright, shiny lights?

This is a part of what I find so irritating about Starbucks. I certainly do not begrudge them their success because they have earned it by giving the public what the public wants and doing it with sufficient consistency to make a lot of money and grow bigger than the Holy Roman Empire. But what I do find so tiresome is the goody-two-shoes sanctimony that they have draped over themselves in the process.

The last time I patronised a Starbucks outlet (in West London) I was struck by the number of leaflets there were dotted around the store containing feelgood PC homilies about ‘fair trade’ and ‘environmental concerns’. Does this really mean that their customers want their coffee and Italian biscotti served up with a generous helping of middle-class guilt?

A quick perusal of the Starbucks UK website throws up acres of this kind of mummery, contained mostly in their ‘Social Responsibility Statement’ from which we can rest assured that:

By making investments that benefit coffee producers, their families and communities, and the natural environment, Starbucks is helping to promote a sustainable model for the worldwide production and trade of high-quality coffee.

That word ‘sustainable’ again! What does it mean, for chrissakes?

We strive to be a responsible neighbour and active contributor in the communities where our partners and customers live, work and play.

What are they, coffee vendors or boy scouts? Do they mean that they send their staff out onto the streets to be busybodies and pests?

Do the Grand Poobahs of Starbucks actually believe in all this modish claptrap? If so, why? Surely their own success serves as a standing refutation to the kind of anti-globo drivel that they appear to want to wallow in? Surely they, of all people, would have learned that the way to make the world a better place is for lots and lots of people to go out and do precisely what they have done, not posture uselessly with policies of mandatory, trendy niceness.

Or perhaps it is really all part of a cunning tactic on their part to shield themselves from the anti-globo morlocks. Perhaps, by slapping their entire operation over with this kind of Monbiotic boilerplate they hope to wrongfoot their sworn enemies. “Look guys, there is no need to trash our outlets. We may be playing the capitalist game but really deep, down we’re with you”. Perhaps paying lip-service is a lot cheaper than a shakedown by crusading politicans. If it is really all a talisman to keep the vampires at bay, then I suppose I cannot blame them.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it any more than those Parisian left-bankers will (although in the case of the latter they will recoil in disgust because all this managerial anti-globo cant is a poor substitute for the real thing).

If the owners of Starbucks really mean what they say then I do wish they would wake up and smell the coffee, preferably their own. If not, then I sort of understand, but I think it a shame that they feel obliged to submit intellectually to the enemies of progress in order to avoid having to submit to them in practice.

Either way, when I do go into a Starbucks, I want a cup of coffee, not lectures.

23 comments to Would you like guilt with your coffee, sir?

  • Julian Morrison

    It’s advertising. They’re selling the brand on the basis that part of your purchase goes to charitable works. That’s a pretty normal advertising gimmick.

    It’s also cunning psych. They are giving coffee-craving slightly-greens an excuse to override their vestigial ideology.

  • Scott

    I think Starbucks’ move towards “fair trade” and “organic” coffee is driven by several factors, which are actually intertwined.

    There is no doubt that in one way they are playing the PR game. Every year their annual shareholder’s meeting in Seattle is beset by protesters (who, if they were really worried about conditions in the coffee industry, would turn their attention to the makers of mass-market grocery store coffee. Starbucks only makes up a couple percent of the global coffee industry) demanding this or that from the company. Starbucks has responded by introducing more fashionably environmentally friendly products. In this way they seem eager to head off further protests.

    But also remember that Starbucks is a quintessentially Seattle company. They come from a wealthy city with serious liberal leanings. These are people who actually do pay a dollar more for a bag of “shade grown” beans, or happily fork over another 50 cents for a cup of “fair trade” brew. These are people who religiously recycle and snap up hybrid Toyotas at a furious pace. For the most part they are willing to put their own money where their mouths are, and bless them for it.

    And that leads to the third factor, which is that Starbucks must actually be doing a pretty decent business in these kind of products. Because they are also a company that is seriously fixed on the bottom line. Like someone using a French press to squeeze every last drop of flavor and caffeine out of their grounds, Starbucks is squeezing every last bit of profit out of their green and beige stores. They’ve found that their core consumers are willing to pay more for products that make them feel good about themselves! Ka-ching!

    So in the end, they are doing it because it makes them look good, because their customers want them to, and because they can make money doing it. Sounds win-win-win to me.

  • Millie Woods

    Well here’s what happened in Montreal with Second Cup a Toronto based Starbucks type coffee place. First of all, it was no smoking and franco Montrealers/Quebeckers are fumeurs par excellence.
    Second it had a take no prisoners approach to the draconian language laws and refused to change its name to deuxieme tasse which it could do legally because established business entities were allowed to keep English names.
    The result – Second Cup became the city’s most popular coffee hangout and it still is.
    And oh yes the product is excellent so if Parisians have a taste for good coffee served up in pleasant surroundings, Starbucks may just succeed.

  • “Does this really mean that their customers want their coffee and Italian biscotti served up with a generous helping of middle-class guilt?”

    You guys just don’t get it, do you?

    Starbucks started in Seattle.
    It is still based in Seattle.
    It exports Seattle.

    So the answer is “yes.”

  • PS Scott describes it fairly and accurately.

  • tbrosz

    I went to Paris for the first time last summer. For all the fuss made by the Frency, I couldn’t help but notice that, like in the U.S., there is a McDonalds on like every third block. We’ll see what happens with Starbucks.

  • Shawn

    Many French will of course whine about U.S. imperialism, and Jose Bove’s mob and their Islamic fundamentalist allies may well cause some trouble. Meanwhile down here in the Pacific, the French still have real imperial colonies, and not too long ago they were testing nuclear weapons on them. Whats the French word for hypocrisy?

  • Lewis

    You heard it here. Starbucks will be a major commercial success in France and the elites will go nuts about it — just as has happened with McDonalds, Trek bikes, and Jerry Lewis.

  • HitNRun

    Sucher hit it on the head. Seattle is the beating heart of middle class guilt. The citiy is Parisian elitism framed in American prosperity. (At least, according to what I observed and every account I’ve heard- and there are no shortage of them.)

    Of course, Starbucks has people with Republican sense in their upper echelons- it would be impossible for them to achieve the penetration they have running on Seattlian lefty sympathies. Those people no doubt see the wisdom in sticking with the company line. Most (American) conservatives are not out on an ideological quest, after all; unlike their counterparts, they’re trying to make money, and that’s where the term “silent majority” comes from. So I doubt the political bent will be going anywhere soon.

    Personally, I think Starbucks will do all right in France. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, and Starbucks is going to kick up a mighty shitstorm by its presence.

  • Verity

    HitnRun – Paris isn’t so easily impressed that Starbucks will “kick up a mighty shitstorm”. Some people will like it; others won’t. It’ll do OK, especially during the summer months when the Americans are over. Paris is an ancient city and has seen many successes and many failures come and go. Don’t get too excited.

  • If Starbucks peddles leftist drivel to stave off protests, it doesn’t work very well. American Starbucks are the site of protests on a semi-regular basis, especially from the anti-global crowd.

    I saw one interview with some leftists who were asked why they kept harrassing Starbucks, after all weren’t there political stances and policies more to their liking than just about any company on the planet? The answer was that they knew Starbucks would listen to their complaints. As far as I can tell, caving in just costs them more of the same.

  • Given the global prominence of this brand, I find it quite surprising that only now are Starbucks about to open their first branch in Paris:

    Starbucks do not enter markets gradually. They indulge in what they call “clusterbombing”. This means that they go from zero stores in a city to a large number in very quick time. Therefore, there are generally only cities with no Starbucks stores (or one or two due to subletting arrangements with companies like Borders, Barnes & Noble or Bi-Lo) or cities with lots of Starbucks stores. Rather than entering a lot of markets gradually at the same time, they enter markets one after another. They have tended to enter markets where the coffee was previously crap (England or Japan, for instance) before entering markets where the coffee was good (France or Italy). Therefore Paris has had to wait.

    An interesting consequence of this is that if you only visit the sorts of cities where Starbucks are present (Most US cities, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Berlin), it is possible to think that there is a Starbucks on every street corner throughout the world, whereas in fact there is only a Starbucks on every street corner in a relatively small number of cities, and there are very few Starbucks anywhere else. People who think that Starbucks are globally widespread generally only reveal that they haven’t travelled much, or at least that they haven’t travelled widely. (You can see which countries Starbucks operate in here. It is only 29 countries, and and it is actually only a few cities in those countries. Starbucks is not at this point all that global a company, at least not compared to McDonald’s or Coca-Cola.

  • I didn’t mean to imply that the corporate culture of Starbucks is hypocritical and simply using liberal pieties as eyewash. That’s the marvelous thing about capitalism — it’s not an “either/or” world of 1-dimensional thinking.

    Starbucks is simultaneously a ferocious competitor and also has (I believe sincerely) a corporate culture with a slightly liberal perspective. You or I might not share it, but I do think that they are for real.

  • Theodopoulos Pherecydes

    Re the smoking: when I’m in London I often stay at the Victory Services Club and walk past the Starbucks at Edgeware Road and Seymour Street. The Middle Eastern oontingent likes the coffee and they smoke their hookahs at the tables on the sidewalk. Surely the Parisian Starbucks will allow the same thing and, thereby, secure “mon patronage”.

  • Jacob

    “Starbucks is simultaneously a ferocious competitor and also has (I believe sincerely) a corporate culture with a slightly liberal perspective. You or I might not share it, but I do think that they are for real.”

    If this “liberal perspective” results in printing some brochoures or leaflets and putting some nice sounding slogans on their web site – that is dirt cheap, and they can indulge in it , so why not ?
    Liberalism on the cheap !

  • Ernie G

    The worldwide presence of Starbucks has spawned a new tool for economists: the Latte Index, which is the imbalance in official exchange rates based on the price of a Tall Latte in local currency vs. the price in dollars.

    “The index, published yesterday morning, suggests that the dollar’s recent dive has left the euro overvalued by as much as a third, while sterling is about 17 per cent too high against the greenback.

    The cheapest place in the world to buy a tall latte is Bangkok – the Thai currency is 31 per cent undervalued against the dollar.”

  • Dave S.

    Multi-millionaire capitalists Ben & Jerry have done quite well with the liberal-guilt-assuagement thing.

    Starbucks will find a market in Paris with the minority of Parisians who do not smoke or indulge in preening existentialist cynicism.

  • HitNRun

    “Paris isn’t so easily impressed that Starbucks will “kick up a mighty shitstorm”…Paris is an ancient city and has seen many successes and many failures come and go.”

    I understand your idea, but don’t let my vernacular cloud my message- the antiglobalization debate in France over American cultural domination gives it free publicity and the restaurant is likely to be cited frequently in these conversations, columns, and debates, probably by the very people who want to banish the chain.

    “Don’t get too excited.”

    I’m sorry if I affected that idea. I’d like nothing more than for Starbucks to fail, actually. The obtuse menu and the faux-intellectuals it has produced since its penetration of my area a year or so are maddening. I’m just giving my analysis of its chances, which I think are pretty good. Also, as other people have since pointed out, France has seen a sizable reduction of French people (that is to say ethnic French) in its national makeup; other ethnicities and nationalities are less likely to care about the simplisme of going to Starbucks.

  • Starbucks produces “faux-intellectuals”! 🙂

    Interesting.

  • Mr Quartier will be wrong. Just like fast-food was not supposed to work in France – the French eating hamburgers ? ARe you kidding ? – Starbucks will be a success, if only because it’s different. French espressos are tiny, they cost a fortune, the service is often condescending when it’s not rude and yes, the smoke prevent a huge chunk of the population from going in a cafe for a quick coffee.

    Give people five or six times more coffee for the same price, with a smile and no smoking, and they will come.

    McDonald’s earnings growth was higher in France than in any other western countries in 2002, and probably in 2003 as well.

  • >>Six years after it served up the first decaf cappucino in Europe, the Seattle-based global coffee giant is ready to take on the nation that invented café society.<< Not to change the direction of the conversation radically, but wasn't this actually the Austrians? Starbucks has nine location in Vienna, so they mustn't have had too much difficulty breaching the gates there.

  • “I like Starbucks coffee…”

    Hmmm. Well, okay, I suppose Robert Parker drinks a glass of Gallo from time to time. But still.

    I’ve always found Starbucks to be overpriced, and mediocre good coffee. In other words, the coffee is good, but not great. It’s like Pizza Hut pizza – always okay, never rotten, rarely excellent. The boutique drinks – gingerbread latte, for instance – are generally tasty but expensive as hell.

    Burnished anti-French credentials notwithstanding, I prefer my store-bought Joe from a chain called Au Bon Pain. They serve real heavy cream to go with their stinking strong brew, and they cost half as much as Starbucks, even in Washington D.C. They also have great bistro soup & sandwiches, pastry & bread. Caribou Coffee is also pretty good, so is XOXO. And none of them hand out anti-globaloney literature with their biscotti.

  • Kevlar

    I don’t drink coffee, and even if I did, I find Starbuck’s too expensive. I don’t even get hot chocolate there.

    But, what is wrong with “Second Cup” becoming “la deuxième tasse” considering most customers and employees of the place in Montreal would be francophone? For that matter why can’t “Starbuck’s” become “chez Starbuck” or “cafe Starbuck” in Quebec or France? Would it kill them? Not likely. Are they just too lazy/ greedy to do the work of changing? I think so.