Dear Starbucks
Got room for Ocean Beach in the lucky 600?
To: Howard Schultz, Chief Executive Officer, Starbucks Corporation, Seattle, Wash.
From: D.A. Kolodenko, Columnist, San Diego CityBeat
I know you won’t respond to this letter. You won’t even read it. CEOs of mega-corporations hire people to read their mail. Maybe if I were Oprah or the president of Kazakhstan, your underlings would bounce this up the chain of command, but I’m just a lowly columnist for a free weekly in a city with only 233 Starbucks locations. No matter.
This is an epistolary column, Howard (Can I call you Howard?), and whether or not you read it is irrelevant.
Seven years ago, I wrote a letter to former CEO of Starbucks, Orrin Smith, who took the gig from you when you became chief global strategist. In that letter, I asked Orrin to cancel the proposed opening of a Starbucks in my neighborhood. I’m pretty sure Orrin never got the letter. Otherwise, they would never have opened that Starbucks, right? Anyway, now that you’re back at the helm and have decided to make the closing of 600 locations in the U.S. part of your corporate restructuring plan to address Starbucks’ plummeting stock, I was kind of hoping you might put Ocean Beach on the chopping block.
According to The Associated Press, you guys are still trying to figure out which ones to close. They report that 70 percent of the ones getting axed opened within the last two years. That leaves about 180 more Starbucks that you’ll be unloading. I’m assuming that “underperformance” is the criterion.
Surely, the O.B. Starbucks is in the lower tier of profit-makers. After all, the rent you’re paying there is about three times the going rate for Newport Avenue, and most of the 14,000 citizens of O.B. would rather have their mom catch them walking out of the Hustler Superstore with a stack of DVDs than be seen carrying a $5 cup of coffee out of the O.B. Starbucks.
But given that there are more than 12,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S., you’ll probably be able to find 180 stores making even less money than the one in O.B., which unfortunately attracts a few locals and tourists who don’t know better.
So let me make a case for a different criterion in deciding which Starbucks will go: Shut down the ones in neighborhoods where you’re least wanted.
In an interview with Business Ethics magazine in December 1995—around the time your coffee empire was just starting to become the ultimate symbol of the corporate homogenization of nearly every aspect of human life—you said that you didn’t want Starbucks to open in neighborhoods where they were not wanted. It was in the context of explaining how you’d do whatever it takes to make everyone like you, remember?
But, of course, that didn’t work. Not everybody likes Starbucks. Some resent the ubiquity. Others take issue with the predatory business practices, labor policies or product quality. They make websites like ihatestarbucks.com. In O.B., the opinions vary. Some of us are fine with patronizing the Starbucks in the nearby chain-store-laden Sports Arena area, where it fits the already mega-corporatized strip-mall environment. What unites the majority of us is the desire not to have one in O.B.
In 2001, I seized on your claim. I joined the effort to preserve the character of our community, as all around us the neighborhoods of San Diego were starting to, in the words of New York’s righteous rabble-rouser, Reverend Billy, “drown in a sea of identical details.” My O.B. homies and I took you at your word, collecting signatures on a petition (thousands of them—they might still be in a file there somewhere), holding massive protests (hundreds showed up—on March 25, 2001, O.B. held one of the biggest protests ever against a Starbucks) and even conducting a survey of hundreds in O.B., resulting in rejection of the proposed Starbucks by the Ocean Beach Planning Board and Town Council.
But Starbucks ignored our wishes and opened on Sept. 11, 2001. It felt like an omen. The argument was that if some people wanted it, they’d open anyway. Well, there will always be a few who care more about having an “emotional brand experience,” as you call it, than in protecting the character of a neighborhood, but I honestly can’t imagine a Starbucks being less wanted than the one in O.B.
What you have always seemed unwilling to accept, Howard, is that no matter how much money you give to the Democratic Party, no matter how many cups you claim to recycle, no matter how good you think you treat your employees, no matter where your heart is, no matter how much you try to make ethics at the very least a consideration in your business practices, some of us still don’t want you on every corner of every block in every city in every country in the world. Closing 600 locations to protect profits is fine, but how about protecting neighborhoods?
To be more specific: Some of us would like it if our little corner of the world could remain unbranded. Should there be a Starbucks at the Great Pyramid of Giza? On the Galapagos Islands?
Our little main street of small, locally owned businesses may not seem like much to you, but to OBceans the albeit funky character of this place is as precious as a natural or architectural wonder. It doesn’t matter that you try to blend in by creating a chameleon store facade or encourage your employees to join a beach cleanup. The point is that we need some cities, villages and neighborhoods that are not just a little bit different, but utterly different. Humans benefit most from real diversity, not manufactured diversity.
Last year, the infamous Starbucks in China’s Forbidden City was shut down. It was forced out because it didn’t fit the character of the ancient palace grounds. We don’t have the clout of China. Hell, we don’t even have the backing of the San Diego City Council, but we do have a request: Let us be among the lucky 600. Pretty please with sugar stirred in?
Write to dak@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
Published: 07/15/2008
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Comments
It's not news to me that there is a minority in OB who patronize the Starbucks - I mentioned that in the column.
And so what if some of them are sellouts like you? There's always a few.
I have mixed feelings about this issue. A big, big part of me agrees with D.A. and his contempt for the monolithic overdogs. On the other hand, I remember how offended I was when Cardiff tried to run F Street adult bookstores out of town.
I really don't want Ocean Beach to become another strip mall paradise and I support a community's right to reject a business, but I don't blame Starbucks for doing what it does either.
There's no evil entity here, just two groups with different interests, each having a right to theirs.
D.A. Kolodenko, Someperspective was just trying to post an opinion. If "Humans benefit most from real diversity," why are you allowing only one point of view to be posted on your article without being attacked? I agree that Starbucks shouldn't be in OB, but you won't get anywhere by acting spiteful toward every opinion but your own.
First, I am not denying anyone the right to their different interest and second I am not disallowing any point of view.
Second, I never called anyone "evil." I called those in OB who support the Starbucks "sellouts." I wouldn't say that's spiteful; I'd say it's accurate. Yes it's a shame and yes it makes me angry, but if people want to sell out OB to the corporations, I am going to speak out about it. They have a legal right to wreck my neighborhood, thanks to a sellout city council, and I have a right to call them on it. Since the Starbucks came in, we now have the historic Strand theater turned into a giant tacky corporate mega souvenir chain designed to destroy the small shops. We have an ugly plastic Submarina on Bacon St. with big ugly lighted fluorescent signs on Bacon & Newport and an atrocious Subway on Cable St.. We also had a Boll Weevil, which came in and painted over a mural by a local artist. Fortunately, the Boll Weevil didn't survive because OBceans didn't step foot in there--they maintained their loyalty to Hodad's. So far, I'd say OB has done a pretty good job of supporting local businesses and preventing the cave-in to the dominant shift toward mega-corporate control of all human consumption. Perhaps the destructive force of multinational homogenization isn't "evil" but whatever it is, it takes vigilance to resist it. And by the way, Starbucks has released a list of its first closures and OB didn't make the cut, thanks to the likes of "someperspective." So call me a sore loser.
Starbucks is closing almost exclusively in urban (read:minority) neighborhoods:
1ST & MARKET
EUCLID AVE & FEDERAL BLVD
UNIVERSITY & ARAGON
30TH ST & EL CAJON
NATIONAL & 36TH
11TH & C
with a few exceptions/borderline cases:
PARK & UNIVERSITY
MIRA MESA
MISSIONGORGE RD
COLLEGE & LINDO PASEO
D.A.,
Don't get me wrong, I'm with you on the whole Starbucks thing. But would you possibly care to define "local" businesses? To the best of my knowledge, Boll Weevil is a local chain of burger joints. I'm not really aware of them existing outside of San Diego. Yes, it's a chain, and kind of a cheesy east county-esque burger joint to boot, but a locally owned and operated crap-hole nonetheless.
As for Submarina, they're a bit harder to defend, being that there seems to exist a prefabricated franchise location almost everywhere one happens to find themselves in San Diego (and sometimes outside of San Diego too). But they started out locally as well. The bulk of their locations reside within San Diego county. Is there a D.A. Kolodenko threshold for how many locations a locally owned business may open before they become a hometown destroying monstrosity?
hello darBot. I appreciate your line of questioning here. Obviously there is some gray area. It is up to the community as a whole to determine what sorts of businesses they want to patronize and not everyone will agree with me, of course. I was having a conversation with my friend Tom today, a longtime OBcean, who I ran into in surf-check alley, he returning from an afternoon swim, I heading out for an after-work bike ride. He said he had great respect for Mike Hardin, owner of Hodad's on Newport. Tom ran into Mike down by the seawall one day not long ago and asked him why he hadn't franchised, considering the lines out the door everyday. Mike said (I'm paraphrasing), "I have a successful business, a nice little place to live, a wonderful community. I'm happy. Why would I need anything else?"
This is the right kind of business model & attitude for OB. The James Gang T-shirt company and Jungle Java are a couple other examples of OB businesses run by people who live in, love and contribute to the community in real ways, not through pr stunts. I could go on, but my point is that one is enough, maybe two (like Newbreak). Once you start opening store after store after store, it becomes about greed. To me, it's not enough that a company is based in or started out in San Diego. After all, Jack in the Box started in SD, hence the godawful location on Voltaire Street, which opened decades ago when it was closer to a mom & pop joint than the behemoth it has become. So, I don't think a business automatically becomes a "hometown destroying monstrosity" when it opens its third location, but when they do, I start to become suspicious. My point is in protecting the spirit of OB as a community: it's owners that you know; it's not painting over a mural because your restaurants have a branded color scheme; It's not cookie cutter plastic environments. Yes, the Boll Weevil wasn't as bad as, say, a Burger King, but I am really glad it's gone. There are a dozen or so others around town for anyone who needs it. And if Submarina goes ( I wish), there are over 50 others in SD, OC and now expanding into Arizona, Texas, etc. But for a much better sandwich there is a little labor of love called Roots right around the corner. In other words, I like how OB manages to maintain an old-fashioned small-town feel, where the people who own a lot of the businesses also live here, so the quality of life issues affect them, too. And also, it looks different. OB doesn't look like anywhere else. It doesn't look like a strip mall. It may be quaint, or outdated, but I like it this way. Ultimately, I'll put it this way: I assess new businesses based on how much, or to what degree, I believe they contribute to or detract from the spirit of OB.
Fair enough, D.A. I must admit to being somewhat of a poser here. I moved away from S.D. a few years ago and now reside in San Luis Obispo. But, your point of view is shared by many people up here as the same debate rages on about chain stores slowly enveloping the once 100% locally owned and operated downtown area. At first I didn't understand what all the hub-bub was about, being that almost everywhere in S.D. was overrun by chain stores.That's just how I always remember it being, and that was the reality that I accepted. But, the longer I lived here, the more I came to appreciate the contributions that the locally owned businesses have to offer. If I'm hungry and need a sandwich, f**k Subway, I've got High St. Deli. It's the best damn sandwich I've ever had (Sorry Chalkboard Deli in P.B.) If I'm feeling the need for a caffeine fix I'll patronize Linnaea's. Home Depot? No thanks, I'll head down to Pacific Home and Garden instead, etc. Anyway, I hear what your saying, just a bit curious about your feelings on the local chain store/franchise subject. By the way, I didn't know about Jack in the Box. You learn something new everyday.
Thanks again darBot. I'll be driving up the coast at the end of August, so i will have to stop in SLO for a sandwich at High St. Deli - thanks for the tip!
I lived in OB for several years and was even at the boycott you describe when Starbucks was pushing to come into town. So I can relate. At the time, I was anti-institution and Starbucks was as much of an institution as the church my mom forced me to go to growing up.
I now work for Starbucks (gasp!) and I have to tell you that many whom were along side me, at the boycott, now visit this store and have commented to me (under their breath, when no one is listening) that they enjoy the store location. I know it's not what you want to hear, but despite Starbucks being uncool in indi-communities, it does serve a customer base that wants Starbucks there. Even some of the ones that were protesting it 7 years ago.
Just some perspective...