Shop Local

In the wake of Starbucks' 911 call that led to a perp walk of two innocent black men, the company has taken to an apology tour, an in-person meeting between their CEO and those arrested, and shutting down for a day to conduct obligatory sensitivity training. But if you followed Chipotle's embarrassing diarrhea fiasco or Facebook's less-than-grueling two days in front of the Senate, you can certainly spot a trend: feign shock from the top down, promise future accountability, and keep an apologetically low profile during Twitter's 48 hour attention span.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

I have to wonder when the general public's patience for the corporate excuse-mill will begin to wane. Or if, in the age of rapid-fire social media, the past's inability to instantaneously expose all ill-repute has simply been traded for our collective 21st Century ADD. 

A month later, does anyone but those afflicted remember that this even happened? No doubt The Onion is already drafting satirical replies to Starbucks' closure on the 29th #FML #ThisIsTheWorstThingThatsEverHappenedToAnyone.

Aside from recent gun reform debates that went on for an unprecedented month, I can't remember a post-smartphone boycott that lasted for more than a few days. Stocks inevitably fall for a few hours, but the cycle has been so normalized that even Facebook's value managed to surge while the Silicon Valley's prodigal son was testifying before Washington. 

Wall Street owns our outrage, even when it's directed at them. 

Shareholders know that corporate remorse is designed to benefit themselves, and it's time we begin to recon with this, and what it means as consumers and suppliers. 

Public corporations (pick one) function under business models layered far more insidiously than simple bigotry as the street knows it, and treating the symptoms that expose themselves the way they did at Starbucks is akin to bandaging a malignant tumor. The response - be it Starbucks' apology, Chipotle's investigation and blame-game, or whatever Southwest decides to do about the commercial airline industry's first death in almost a decade - is always a measured calculation backed up by data that proves it won't just repair its stock price and image, but actually advance it.

We expect this from politicians, but when perceived ideologue CEOs tout the same modus operandi, brand loyalists continually return to freely advertise their products by literally wearing and carrying their logos. 

"They've learned" and "they're actually better now" become the aftermath's rally cry from consumers who either don't want to kick the habit of their guilty pleasures or are afraid to admit they ever shopped somewhere so blind-sidedly money-minded in the first place. In the end, inevitable Starbucks apologists (among others) will sound like religious Trump-supporters excusing his extra-marital affairs. We all know better, but continue to embrace whatever is offered up so long as it supports our fractured ideals or ability to be as lazy as humanly possible. 

Any "good liberal" wants to assume Starbucks is a good company. They offer benefits to part-time employees and pay more than the minimum wage. But we ignore the fact that these decisions themselves are also the results of pre-packaged analytics that have invented an infallibly profitable model.

Remember those dastardly deeds carried out by Facebook's partner in crime, Cambridge Analytica? They don't exclusively apply to "free" ad driven companies like Facebook and Twitter. Starbucks analyzes the very same type of information. It's gathered through in-app purchases, registered gift cards, and social media, then used to determine what it needs to maintain its customers and grow.

In the realm of public corporations, we're more than customers, we're extensions of their products. Companies like Starbucks continue making money off us long after we've walked out the door.

If the Senate was really interested in (or understood how to) put the kibosh on Facebook's ill repute, one would have suggested banning targeted advertising altogether. 

Most would like to think we shop ethically by supporting companies that seem to support us back. But public companies don't have a social consciousness. Companies that offer unisex dressing rooms and wedding cards for same-sex couples don't do so at the behest of LGBT equality, only popular opinion and how it can be monetized.

Just watch as the outcry over gun reform and school shootings returns to a stable baseline and you'll see the banks and retailers who promised they'd block the purchase and sale of AR-15s back away from the subject or ignore they ever made such statements in the first place, none of which were very specific to begin with. 

The only business you can trust is the one you know. Whole Foods isn't expensive because it's healthy, it's expensive because it's fostered a clientele that assumes anything affordable is unhealthy. Does anyone really think Jeff Bezos is worth $119 billion because he wants his customers to reap the health benefits of kale?

Likewise, Starbucks has strategically weighed the pros and cons of catering to a niche, and whether their bottom line dictates change or it's more profitable to just weather the storm.

The sad truth is, this Starbucks has long been known locally as the "racist Starbucks" and that's never been formally addressed. Something about these two men didn't sit well with the manager and by extension, the clientele her company caters to. That doesn't inspire a lot of hope that anything will be remedied on May 29th but Starbucks' stock value; then it can return to the status quo. 

Like any massive company, Starbucks can always play it off by pointing out their "diverse" staff and clientele, but let's not tiptoe around the obvious: no Starbucks looks like the crowd at Dunkin' Donuts, and Starbucks doesn't want it to. 

Black, white, Indian, Asian, gay, trans, Hispanic...Starbucks customers are of a certain demographic, apparent tax-bracket, and a look that is colloquially "white." The police were called on these two men because they were black, and the thin racial veil that Starbucks (et. al.) surfs under is every bit as deplorable, if not more, than textbook black-and-white racism. 

The fact that Starbucks claims arbitrary training will somehow eradicate racial bias among its 238,000 employees isn't just disingenuous, it's offensive. If erasing 241 years of institutionalized American racism were as easy as a poorly produced corporate video and a jam session with Linda in human resources, we'd all go through it in elementary school and I wouldn't be writing this. 

To Starbucks, and any corporation that gets caught with its pants down, this isn't about social progress. It's about their bottom line. Blatantly bigoted events like this should be used to explore why businesses are obligated to welcome everyone. Instead, they're used to advertise a brand's image as inclusive and compassionate while explaining to managers how much money each specific minority spends in their stores per annum. 

Doing otherwise would negate the bottom line. They've gamed the process so well that they know exactly how to spin the worst press into free publicity. 

Starbucks has long established itself as classist, at best. They have "a look." It behooves their investors to expect this mentality of their customers, and manifests itself when franchisees call the cops on people who don't blend in. If they openly catered to the demographics of a roadside gas station, i.e. everyone, they might lose the honey pot of self-righteously woke customers who excuse their own covert racism by re-Tweeting YouTube videos of Beyonce at Coachella. 

Handing your money over to Wall Street darlings shouldn't be second nature, only a necessary evil that comes with credit cards and cable. In cities like Philadelphia, especially, brand loyalty should be the realm of local chains like Saxby's and La Colombe, and even then only when owner-operated businesses aren't available.

Shop local - Green Street, Last Drop, Square One - only then can you really know why you should, or shouldn't, support a business. By the time any company has ballooned to the size of Starbucks, it's nothing but under-vetted employees operating within a vacuum of data points telling them exactly how to keep Wall Street happy. And how prejudiced they're allowed, or need, to be. Any apology, response, or sensitivity protocol is every bit as soulless as this profitability matrix because each is merely a cog in exactly that machine. 

No one needed to wait for two peaceful black men to get handcuffed in a Starbucks to find a reason to avoid a corporate chain. Our default setting should be supporting our neighbors, not Wall Street. I'm not sure when that became such an impossible idea. 

Whatever Happened to the Coffee Shop?

Somewhere between a ubiquitous diner and the proliferation of Starbucks stood a brief period where the independent coffee shop reigned supreme, and the chains on the rise were more than just app-driven money mills. Believe it or not, two decades ago, gastropubs and beer gardens weren't the way flannel-clad Gen Xers spent their evenings. There were bars, to be sure, mostly stuffed with stuffy parents sipping Manhattans and complaining about taxes, or sad dives not yet appreciated with a hip sense of irony. 

If we went out to drink, we went out: dance clubs, concert venues, warehouses that were loud, hot, and sweaty. Booze was incidental. Getting together "for a drink" was for old people and alcoholics. When the Slacker Generation gathered to watch the world pass us by, we met up at the coffee shop. 

On the heels of International Coffee Day (do we really need another "Day?"), it's clear that caffeine's addictive personality is sunny as ever. There are six Dunkin Donuts, four Starbucks, two Saxbys, and a La Colombe within two blocks of City Hall, and each does a brisk business. But each operates on a fast food franchise model, not under the cozy notion of a traditional cafe. Even Starbucks, arguably the end result of a fifty year American trend, pales in comparison to its past. Comfy chairs have been swapped out for metal stools which, like those at McDonald's or Burger King, are designed specifically to keep customers from lingering. 

It's unfortunate that an industry built on bringing people together in a warm and inviting atmosphere, welcoming them to lounge for hours, now so blatantly wants to get you and your money in and out as fast as possible. This says nothing of the hours, either. If you want to get out of the house after 7pm, you're options are severely limited. In fact, unless you want a cocktail or beer, there is almost nothing to do after dark.

What happened? Money is certainly a culprit, as is a spendthrift 21st Century culture of consumerism. As with everything, I'm sure technology can be to blame somehow. And of course, generational rifts drive new fads. Millennials will someday lament the loss of micro-brews the way our parents and grandparents may wonder whatever happened to the Supper Club. 

But this isn't exclusively a case of rosy memories and the frustrations of change. The loss of the independent coffee shop is one in a myriad of examples where another layer of our culture is stripped away on behalf of homogenization and the most profitable status quo. It's a bit odd that cafes have gone the way of music shops and bookstores despite offering one of the few products you can't buy on Amazon. Perhaps it was discarded by fickle Millennials, the coveted goldmine of marketing, because of its mere 90s-ness. 

Like all business trends in the 21st Century, metrics drive decisions. For all progressives like to tout a European ideal, they sure have a penchant for corporate creature comforts like Target and Chipotle. We should be embracing the notion that exponential profits and "going public" aren't the end-all goal in life, even business. Start patronizing employees who simply love their jobs. Why aren't we more reluctant to hand our hard earned cash over to corporate entities that view us as nothing more than aggregated data and a transaction?

Of course these are all subjects better fleshed out over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, were there such a place. Maybe we should turn down our nostalgia filters and start looking at Generation X for the insight we once offered, and not just an interim exercise in uselessness. We loved life as we watched it pass us by, and we refused to succumb to "The Man." I'm not sure when that turned into a bad thing, but probably somewhere around the first time a Millennial suggested how much better the world will be once the Civil Rights trail-blazing Baby Boomers start dying. 

They're cold. 

Generational debates are a minefield of conjecture, but there is something valid to be said of a demographic raised amid the isolated anonymity of the internet, and their resignation to corporate greed. Their relationships with the largest companies in the world - Apple, Facebook, Google - are every bit as intimate as, if not more so than, those of family and friends. To Millennials, Starbucks is a Mom and Pop and Amazon is Main Street U.S.A.

Wall Street won, and no one should think that's good. 

Some corporate ills are impossible to avoid - banks, credit cards, utilities, even careers - but we should all be less willing to sell out to those who only feign an interest in their customers' well being when it can be aggregated for a quarterly prospectus. Be less willing to be a number wherever possible, even if it means using cash in lieu of an app. Such tactics are paraded as streamlined simplicity but really just a nefarious way to continue making money off you long after you've left the store. 

We should all want an independent coffee shop at the corner of our block, not just for the coffee, but for everything it represents.