starbucks

From a distance, the Starbucks model seems to be the ideal model of a market mechanism in this era. It is extremely big on one hand, being a multnational franchise with the maximum bargaining power for material prices, wages and resources allocation, extremely small on the other, being able to fit in any block of buildings on the planet with its green coloured logo and minimum requirements for spatial strategies.

It worked like magic in Asian cities, bringing the franchise an elite Manhattan fifth avanue aura to newly developed cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen, powerful enough to slowly change the food culture in local cultures.

A friend of a friend visited Melbourne from Malaysia and over dinner in Tiamo we asked her what kind of coffee she liked. "Oh, you know, the Starbucks type" Silent for two seconds. we pursued further "what Starbucks coffee?" with a tone of sarcasm. But in fact it makes perfect sense, Starbucks offers coffee in a very efficient model, large cups, and a comfortable indoor environment where one will just go to read a book for hours without being bothered. In fact the company always proudly said that people will just pay to have the Starbucks experience without the coffee.

Then something interesting happened. Without any massive protest by the local community, quietly and slowly, on Lygon street where the coffee shops are everywhere, Starbucks closed down. The reason is quite obvious. The Starbucks model simply fails to capture the rhythm of the Carlton area. People don't grab and go with their hot cappucino as they do in New York, they expect good coffee, and what's more, friends and families come in small groups to dine on the street with an expectation of that noisy, human, sometimes slow Carlton-ness. People don't rush to anywhere after their caffeine fix. They look for cakes, flowers, books, movies, and sometimes nothing, just plain conversations with each other. It's almost the opposite of everything this international franchise provides.

Then I start to wonder if this can be that little niche for our observations and research. What the Google map shows and what it does not show. The rhythm of urbanity. Really small things that touch you. And really small things that connect with each other to form another sense of free market, in no way a market of homogeneous product providers. This is what we try to find from here, small things, which are also extremely large and solid things.



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