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Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

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Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#81

Post by asdff »

Haemm0r wrote: post #57
thundergolfer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sitting on their laptops, usually with headphones, are actually themselves hostile to third places and that's why some cafes ban them on weekends. The definition of a third place is fully incompatible with it being just a remote work location: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Fully agree. Just watched a episode of Friends yesterday. The cafe there could be the definition of a third place. ;-)

Friends is very idealistic in a lot of ways. The closest thing to that experience in real life is a dirt cheap college bar, at least in the day I'm not sure if they are still like this. Everyone has nothing to do after doing the minimum of their responsibilities for the day so we'd just show up at the bar as soon as we could, and others would know to end up there soon as they could whether that be at noon with a backpack still on or around midnight. It was cheap enough where you could basically sit there and drink all day for maybe $20. That probably gets you a drink and a half today if that, and what do you know, no one's hanging out all day at these places because that could cost you $100 instead of $20.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#82

Post by financltravsty »

candiddevmike wrote: post #4
pessimizer wrote: post #2

Or alternately, neighborhoods with no previous coffee shops where Starbucks start opening are gentrifying.

Is Starbucks good at predicting gentrification? Presumably there is some criteria someone is using to gauge the feasibility of a location vs others. If you can beat the rush, you can probably get better leasing terms etc.

Look at demographic data & data that correlates with it. The Census and related organizations offer very fine-grained data (both in characteristics/factors & in level of specificity of location).

In the past, I had built a data brokerage offering clean and centralized data in this area -- the equivalent of Netflix for data catalogs (back when you could say this with a straight face). It is not a hard problem. You can (and many did) throw entire datasets at a random forest as a first-pass, and then retrain with only the features that pass a significance threshold.

Algorithmic identification of real estate investment opportunities for the purpose of corporate expansion is not a new thing. Most serious shops do it. The techniques are simple, but it's the prep and decision-making after that are difficult.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#83

Post by hug »

karmakaze wrote: post #19

I thought the article would be from past years rather than June 2024. Nowadays, we're looking for a Second Place having chosen to lose the workplace and working from home. But I do get that 'Third Place' was the terminology.

It's not that it was the terminology, it still is the terminology.

About 20% of US workers are fully work-from-home. For the vast majority of workers, it still is a third place.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#84

Post by asdff »

shermantanktop wrote: post #29
65 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the location and competition from other local businesses. The Starbucks where my parents live is nice to sit down and have a conversation with someone - it's bigger and has more space. Why? It's a small town and there isn't much competition from other local coffee shops. Compare that with the Starbucks's of Manhattan - usually very cramped, little seating, and meant to be more of a "to go" place than a…

I’d assume that the extreme difference in rent is a bigger factor than the amount of competition.

For some of the locations that have been takeoutified, they used to have chairs and tables but these were purposely removed. The room is awkwardly empty so they stuff it with random chochkys like insulated mugs to fill the void.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#86

Post by asdff »

vcryan wrote: post #7

I thought people stopped going to Starbucks

Some of the starbucks clientele have some interesting behaviors. There is a drive thru/walkup location where the drive through line pours out into the street as people park, walk up, get their order (perhaps a mobile order), leave, drive away, while the drive thru people scarcely moved forward in line. The drivers just sit there in line with their phone 1 foot from the face and inch forward on periphery vision alone. The entire ritual must be deeply habituated at this point, tick tok coupled with a stimulant. They probably have no idea how much time has actually passed.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#87

Post by kevinventullo »

piker wrote: post #55
kevinventullo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively, a small shop only needs to pay on-the-ground workers and direct owners who may be a subset of the first group. Starbucks has to pay the regional managers and their bosses and the shareholders, etc. Also, at the mom-and-pop, no one is screaming “Why is the fourth derivative of profit increase not higher??”

Also, as with the starving artist, supply may be artificially high.

I grok the sentiment, but reckon artificial is not the right word.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#88

Post by rafterydj »

yuzhun wrote: post #38

I'm from a city in central China, where Starbucks is a great place to talk because it's located around a mall, and unlike other stores, the seating is less crowded, but if I want to study or get quiet to do something, I'll choose the library or a less lively local café.

I am currently living in Japan after living my whole life in the United States. I have noticed Japanese Starbucks are much more generous with the space and seating, and generally are wonderful places to socialize/study/work. Additionally, I wonder if it is related to the prevalence of malls and their popularity. In the US, malls are almost universally graveyards, whereas in Japan every Aeon Mall I've ever visited has been full even on weekdays.

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#89

Post by kumarm »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #10
trollbridge wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, Starbucks is opening “kiosk only” locations with no seating that, obviously, fail to function as a third place. My partner finished up a medical appointment and was waiting for me to arrive, and decided to stop in Starbucks. Oops, just a kiosk. The options left for a “third place” was a petrol station that had seating and a grocery store. Somehow I don’t think petrol station seating areas will promotin…

> I don’t need a kiosk; I have an espresso machine I can operate at home or in the office. You would probably enjoy the experience of a small, locally owned coffee shop then. Starbucks is optimizing for their profit. In my suburban city, Starbucks has closed most or all locations that were a few miles from the freeway. They built new locations with drive throughs and very little to no seating within a few blocks of e…

>> Starbucks is optimizing for their profit.

Are we shocked businesses are optimizing for their profit? Isn't that their purpose?

Re: Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés

#90

Post by niemandhier »

explaininjs wrote: post #16
lotsoweiners wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t need a kiosk; I have an espresso machine I can operate at home or in the office. You would probably enjoy the experience of a small, locally owned coffee shop then. Starbucks is optimizing for their profit. In my suburban city, Starbucks has closed most or all locations that were a few miles from the freeway. They built new locations with drive throughs and very little to no seating within a few blocks of e…

In LA, every small locally owned coffee shop has become totally overrun with folks buying one latte and proceeding to take a whole table to themselves and their laptops for the next 5 hours.

There are solutions for this.

In Italy they charge you for the seat.

I have been to places where they charge for a laptop too.

In addition you can minimize cellular network reception and charge for wifi.

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