Steve Green reports that a number of Starbucks coffee shops in the San Francisco area are cutting back on…furniture? Empty or full it’s Standing Room Only. Is it employee theft? A new business model? Or is it one of the many urban pathologies of woke urban living? Bill and Scott help to untangle the mystery.
21 replies on “Welcome to Starbucks”
Starbucks coffee tastes burned and those drinks with 15 pumps of syrup are expensive and unhealthy. We have found a lovely coffee shop a few miles from our home that roasts their beans to perfection, is very welcoming, comfortable and updated to include lots of otlets for device charging. It is locally owned and the owner remembers repeat customers. I wish everyone could find a nice place like this to meet up with friends.
Oh what the heck, I’m jumping in too. Most of all of your comments are spot on. It began with Steve’s closing. He’s right. I’m a mere 75 miles south in Santa Cruz, CA. Homelessness, you got it. We invented it. You’re welcome! University of California Santa Cruz , Santa Cruz Senseless weed, peace love dope. Yup. That’s us.
However, the difference between Santa Cruz AND San Francisco is the type of homeless. Here in Santa Cruz, we have a mix of the unfortunate, the lazy and the stoned, with only a few crazies.
San Francisco, not only has what we have, but the population of Bat Guano Crazies in the City by the Bay is as Bill wrote in “the Animation”, the perpetually enraged and criminally insane, is off the charts. 2 years ago, during the height of the rona lockdowns, I had to take my car for service up to the city, and not in the besty part of the city. From the train station to pick up my car, was a 6 block walk. Since it was in the heart of the lockdowns, it looked like the zombie apocalypse on my walk. No one there. Streets were empty. Of regular humans. So San Francisco’s Zombies felt safe to just wobble down the streets, sidewalks and back alleys. Yelling, screaming, writhing, spitting, vomiting, chasing those who, like me, had to be on the street to get something done. Bat Sh!+ dangerous and crazy. Not just inconvenient….actually dangerous. 6 blocks. Multiple encounters on each block. Mercedes Benz of San Francisco pulled up stakes from their location for over 40 years, and moved to Burlingame, by SFO, out side of San Francisco. Why. No one would come into the dealership anymore.
Freakin Schadenfreude.Starbucks now has to deal with the nonsense they helped promote though their T.O.L.E.R.A.N.C.E. …. No tables means no sitting and no sitting means no crazies have a place to sit. Yeah, that’s so in keeping with their mission, vision and values statements written decades ago. Business store model change my ass.
Oh, and I forget to add, defecating and injecting too.
TMI?
DC is still a pretty big Maskurbation spot. Now we have a study that explains why
Re: masking in public. It could be that the mask wearer has a person at home with multiple co-morbidities whom they are doing whatever they can to minimize the perceived risk. Yes, masks are not truly effective, but if they are even a little bit effective, say 10%, then even that small improvement is worth the minor discomfort, inconvenience and social stigma some will cast your way, in order to help protect a loved one!
I am in that very category. My wife has multiple co-morbidities (as do i), and in addition, got one Moderna shot and nearly died from it. Recorded on the CDC, and two doctors say another shot will kill her.
But I am sure we both got the lesser version of Covid at the same time later.
I do it to make her feel better.
You know, happy wife, happy life.
The main thing masking does is decrease the number of times we put our (gross, contaminated) finger in our nose.
Ew, thanks for searing that image in my head! 😉
But, seriously. Here in SW VA, I see relatively few people still wearing. But they seem to fall into a few categories. Older folks, Mothers with young children, obvious comorbidities.
It is interesting, though, that I frequently see one person of a couple wearing and the other not wearing. For older couples who are together all the time, I really wonder what is going through their heads. They traveled in the same car to church with their spouse. One is wearing a mask, one is not. What protection do they think they are getting??
Even presuming a comorbidity that is not obvious, what do they think they are gaining? There is one young couple (mid 20s) and she is always masked while he never is. I want to ask her if she thinks she is protecting others or herself? In which case, what about him you live together. But I try to be polite at church at least. ( I don’t always succeed which is a different topic of discussion)
What do you think is the rationalization that people have where they continue to wear a mask even if their spouse doesn’t?
To answer your question, she is a believer and he is tolerating her desire to appear on the team of those who “care”. Unfortunately, masks mainly just delayed when we all got the virus, they didn’t stop the spread. And, on the plus side, the later variants were less pathologic.
The virtue signaling mask-wearers are alive and well in the ATL. Rarely see a black female or an older middle aged white female without a mask, the two demographics who are locked up in the Left’s death camps.
(I’m talking in the language of Eric Metaxas from the Bonhoeffer biography. He stood against the Nazification of the German Church and died as a result. The same thing is happening here.)
Maybe they just don’t want people sitting in there next time the place is firebombed during a race war.
I teach part-time at a local college and also substitute teach at some different K-12 schools and there are SOOO many people who are still wearing masks!! A student yesterday had to repeat herself several times while wearing her mask and I could not hear her well enough to figure out what she was saying. I’m still not sure. At least the college finally removed the acrylic shields around the teachers’ desks at the beginning of this term!
You guys are over looking the biggest thumb in your eyes of all time on this one. We’re talking about San Francisco here. The city that in the 1970s and 1980s told other cities/counties, “Send us your homeless. We have the weather for it. We have the tax base for it.” Starbux is one of the major supporters of that movement, and it looks like NOW they’re becoming “woke” to the facts of life.
Would have to agree with both Steve and Scott. Though I will admit that my first impression was of a Jeff Dunham skit with Walter playing a Walmart greeter:
“Get your shit and get out.”
To steal a phrase from Steve Green: Embrace the healing power of AND.
Given this started in SF, there must be a homeless component to it.
However, during the Covid lockdowns, Starbucks went very much to the order ahead on the APP. I go to Starbucks infrequently, my daughter likes the coffee flavored, sugary drinks (Aside, now that she is supporting herself, she has learned to make coffee at home rather than spend $6 on coffee every day, go figure). She would always order with the APP so it was ready when she got there. These drinks are a process and they are slow.
I suspect in an urban setting like SF along with continued Covid hysteria, most of their orders were to go anyway. So their throughput probably does go up as people order ahead and just breeze in pick up and pay through the app.
Also, almost zero interaction with the staff.
Our local Krogers have Starbucks cafes in them. No I have no idea why but there is always a line. Also, the only people I ever see sitting at the tables are the Kroger employees. (There is also a wine and beer bar in our Kroger which always has people sitting there. People are weird!)
I also agree that in hindsight this will be bad as loyalty to brand will suffer.
So, good points all AND probably all correct to some extent.
Another aside: I can’t stand Starbucks coffee. I generally drink Espresso and theirs is awful. Hard to believe that they took the model from Italian coffee lounges. Extremely bitter mostly due to way too high a water temperature.
How slow has Starbucks always been. Here is a clip from the late, great John Pinette. This has to be at least ten years old as he has been gone for close to 9 years. The Starbucks line starts about 45 seconds in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR5KLCv5AzE
I thought that you said relax, with a good cup of coffee. 😆
Perhaps the lack of furniture is designed to “discourage” an encampment from the SFO homeless contingent.
First the bathrooms, now the furniture. There goes the neighborhood
I’m guessing to keep homeless people from camping out there.
You know, the ones San Francisco essentially invited.
A ha! Steve got to it at the end. It’s the first thing that popped into my head.
That was my first guess, too. One way to tell is if the removal of furniture only takes place in areas that feature a significant homeless population.
It wasn’t just the founder of Starbucks who envisioned a community hang-out. When coffee was brought to the Old World from the New, Coffee Houses were the preferred haunt of the Puritans. It’s where insurance companies were formed. It was a big deal.
Yup, churches and coffee houses. Makes you wonder if it was the same sort of people working there. No wonder we’re all neurotic.