The recent Starbuck’s decision to limit use of it’s washrooms to paying customers has triggered a tsu-nami of controversy. It’s not the coffee that’s so essential to customers, one writer says of coffee shops: it’s the ‘social infrastructure’…
That principle has been affirmed over and over again since the first coffee houses popped up in Lon-don’s shipping district 500 years ago. Today, we take ‘coffee shops’ for granted.
A natural fit
The coffee house has been a natural setting for business and social meetings since the first ones – we we know them today – opened in London back in the 17th century.
Coffee was just making a fundamental shift from medicinal use to a recrea-tional beverage at that juncture. And it made a congenial pivot for all kinds of ‘conversation and commerce’, as Wiki-pedia puts it.
Global insurance giant Lloyd’s of Lon-don began as a table-top operation between ship owners and merchants discussing ‘spreading the risk’ of still risky voyages to the spice and silk lands of Asia. In fact, the crucible in which that fledgling business was forged was Lloyd’s Coffee House, whence the name.
Today, we meet routinely at Starbuck’s, and many other venues like it, as neu-tral ‘third places’, for both business and personal reasons. And that’s what the chain’s founder envis-ioned: A cozy, comfortable community crossroads.
‘The world’s living room’
“On the one hand, they are the world’s living room,” says CNN essayist William G. Allen, “with oppor-tunities for delicious food and drink, some conversation, or writing or reading or thinking, plus good music, and no one pressuring you to move along.”
On the other hand, “these businesses are also a percolator of revolutionary thought leadership. For the last 500 years, coffee shops have been the platform for political, social and creative movements, incubators of artistic pursuits, and the marketplace of ideas.”
‘Bridging social capital’
‘Most importantly, coffee shops are easily accessible examples of what political scientists call ‘social infrastructure’, a way to connect us in an era when we are becoming increasingly solitary and divid-ed,” Allen observes. “More specifically, these spaces can be what Harvard professor Robert Putnam calls ‘bridging social capital'[…] [forces that can] bring strangers together (as nearly everyone loves coffee).”
And for those who don’t adore their Java, today’s coffee shops have myriad menu choices to fill the gaps.
Ideal for ‘hanging out’
“The spaces aren’t just designed for talking, writing, reading and hanging out — they actually make you want to do those things,” Allen continues.
They are like your own home, perfected… “The baristas are all slightly cooler than your friends. The music is often reliably well curated (see previous sentence about the baristas). The din of the place and its caffeinated energy are life-affirming.”
Crucially, observes Cameron Moores, co-owner of C&P Coffee Company in Seattle: “They foster a sense of community that is hard to find in this world of electronic gatherings.”
Gísli Marteinn, co-owner and co-founder of Reykjavík, Iceland’s Kaffihús Vesturbæjar opines: “When done right, the coffeeshop is a democratic, open, public space that can give you a rest from the rest of the world, kind of a safe space.”
“I think it becomes a reflection of the neighborhood and then becomes part of the culture,” says Buffy Maguire, co-owner of San Francisco’s Java Beach. “It’s about the art of hanging out…”
My take
All that said, it’s all the sadder – even tragic – that Starbuck’s recently restricted its hanging-out privileges to those who make a purchase.
And, I for one, find it supremely ironic that this edict came down from ‘corporate’ in the middle of newly-appointed CEO Brian Niccol’s campaign to get ‘Back to Starbuck’s’ original roots – for which the chain’s founder, Howard Schultz, coined the phrase, ‘a third place’; neither home or office…
~ Maggie J.