A Winter Tale

This column originally appeared on Sunday, July 6, 2008

I haven’t thought about Winter for about four years now.

I’m speaking not of the three months between the December solstice and the March equinox, mind you. That’s winter, with a small “w.” I’m talking about Winter, the one-named fellow who several years ago vowed to visit every Starbucks in the world.

I wrote about Winter at a time when the borough of West Chester was one of the only places on the face of the earth that did not have a Starbuck franchise within its borders. Soi Yamato Nhongprue street, Pattaya, Thailand yes; Church Street, West Chester no. It galled me, frankly, because I could not fathom why a place with the character and cachet of West Chester wouldn’t rank a Starbucks, while a place like Dilworthtown would.

At the time I learned about Winter, I pointed out that Dilworthtown was the least reasonable place to put a Starbucks I could think of, since it was basically at the crossroads of Going Nowhere and Coming Back. I also noted that the Dilworthtown Starbucks isn’t actually in Dilworthtown, but is located instead along the side of Route 202 in one of those suburban strip malls that the good developers of Chester County have determined we need more and more of, just in case we get the urge for some TGI Friday’s grub on the way home from the Applebee’s.

I checked recently on Winter’s journey and found that he’s been to Starbucks locations in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. He’s been to ‘Bucks in 17 foreign countries. He’s been to the Grand Caffeine Outlets in Paoli and Kennett Square and Lionville and West Goshen and, yes, Dilworthtown. I have no idea if he bought the Starbucks’ CDs by Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell when he was there, but I’ll assume for the record that he did and he uses them to assist in his astral yoga meditation veg-out sessions.

But my man Winter’s task has just gotten a little bit easier.

That’s correct. Starbucks last week announced it was going to close down 600 stores and scale back its plans to open new ones. The roasted bean empire is going to throw out those “underperforming” stores across the globe like yesterday’s grounds. From now on, people in New York and San Francisco and Asrafeih, Lebanon may actually have to cross the street to get a cup of that precious $4 latte on their way to their CyberDesk or InterJob or WebTimeClock, or whatever it is they call workplaces these days.

It was, after all, one of Starbuck’s executives in charge of development, the oddly named Launi Skinner, who famously declared that for high-priced java swillers, “Going to the other side of the street can be a barrier.”

According to the new York Times, the people at Starbucks were once so obsessed with finding perfect new locations for their steamed milk machines that they would look at demographics down to the education level in certain neighborhoods, or judge whether the traffic moved better on one side of a street than the other. “Starbucks commercial real estate executives were known for their rigor in selecting locations,” the Times decreed, quoting a Portland, Ore., real estate guy as saying “Now everybody copies them.”

Hopefully that copying did go overboard. Or else there are going to be a lot of vacant Quiznoses across the country.

The news should not come as a surprise, however. Everyone who ever told the joke about the new Starbucks opening in the men’s room of the old Starbucks knew this as going to happen. And despite new modalities in retail trends, old rules still apply. My mother was the best I ever knew at looking at a new business opening somewhere and saying, “Six months, tops.” She knew that you just didn’t open an Asian-Vegan-Fusion restaurant where the truck stop diner used to be.

I’m sure there are those who will be sad to see those Starbucks close. But it won’t be me. I’ve stayed away from the ‘Buckaroos on principle for several years now, even the one that now has sat in dead center West Chester since February.

For the record, Winter was there on opening day.

Boro' to 'Bucks: Drop Dead

This appeared on Sunday, April 22, 2007


Remember when you were a freshman in college and there was this person, this beautiful blond, who you really wanted to meet? Maybe get to know them, maybe start a relationship, maybe propose, maybe settle down, maybe raise a family and buy a mortgage and send the kids to college and celebrate each other‘s 50th birthday and retire to the South of France with? Remember that?

But they weren‘t having any of you. They were just way too cool for you, and they had other friends to be with and places to go and Spring Break vacations to take, and you, well, you just weren‘t up to their speed. Remember that?

Then you made a splash in the college newspaper because you had been cast in whatever MTV reality show was debuting that September (or whatever the 1960s equivalent of the MTV reality shows were), and all of a sudden your dream person started showing up at your dorm room around 7:30 a.m. wanting to know if you could accompany them to the cafeteria for breakfast and maybe have a ”study break“ later and then send the kids to college and retire to the South of France with. Remember that?

Then you will know how we felt when we heard the news that Starbucks is planning to open a café in West Chester.

After all this time, the Starbucks folks have decided that we here in West Chester are classy enough to be part of their ultra-hip, ubiquitous coffee culture. Not only will Starbucks come to town, but they‘ll be plopping down right smack dab in the middle of the borough, at the corner of High and Gay, where nobody can miss them, not even a West Chester University student walking home at 2:30 a.m. from a ”study break“ at Rex‘s Bar.

We are not amused.

Remember, this is the coffee company that decided it was better to open cafes in Paoli, Chester Springs, Kennett Square, Exton and Downingtown before coming to our fair borough. Remember, this is the coffee company that opened four, count ‘em, four outlets in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, before it opened one in downtown West Chester.

You think we‘re happy? You think we are going to start counting down the days until we can order up a grande of Ethiopean Yergachefee and crank up the Norah Jones on our iPods at the ‘Bucks? You couldn‘t be farther from the truth if you were Albert Gonzalez trying to explain the attorney general firings.

Read our lips, Starbucks folks: We don‘t want you anymore. We are not going to fall for your newly discovered attraction for our brick sidewalks, our historical county courthouse, our brightly painted street signs, our newly elected Democratic state legislators, and just roll over and order whatever size Breakfast Blend you tell us to, like we fell for that beautiful blond back in college.

You had your chance. We asked, nearly begged, for you to come here years ago and you ignored us. Coffee love has a small window of opportunity, and for you we have slammed it shut.

Now The Gap, on the other hand ...

No 'Bucks in the Boro

This appeared on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006

At the Canine Care Center in Frazer, they advertise their services right on the front windows. To wit: They provide dog grooming, doggie day care and wonderful, exotic dog food, all at reasonable prices.

And in addition, they proudly proclaim that they have coffee, and it‘s really, really good.

Leave aside the question of whether the coffee is for the dog owners or the dogs. What I want to point out is that the availability of coffee has gotten out of control.You can get a cup of coffee anywhere.

You can get one in the supermarket. You can get one at the gas station. You can get one at the optometrist‘s. And, from what I now learn, you can get it while your Pomeranian is being clipped.

I suppose that this is representative of the fascination America has developed with coffee. My father used to get up in the middle of the night to fix himself a big hot cup of coffee -- caffeinated, mind you. I found that strange, but in 2006, I can only assume that the general populace would not blink an eye.

My boss, after all, doesn‘t leave the cozy confines of his office here in LocalLand without his stainless steel coffee container. Lord knows, he might get trapped between the news desk and the sports desk and need a shot of joe.

I say this to get to the big news: Last month, Starbucks announced they had set a goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide -- 27,500 more than now. They apparently need more stores because the coffee drinkers of the world can‘t be bothered with searching more than five square feet for their next cup.

The story that I read about this noted that in Seattle there is an office building that has a Starbucks on the first floor, a Starbucks on the 40th floor, and a Starbucks across the street. In Vancouver, Canada, there are Starbucks on opposite sides of the street at one intersection.

As Launi Skinner, senior vice president of Starbucks‘ store development, put it: ”Going to the other side of the street can be a barrier."

So Starbucks is going to have a barrista in 40,000 locations across the globe, with the exception, of course, of one place. West Chester.



That‘s right. It‘s almost 2007, and still no mocha lattes from the ’Bucks in W.C.

P.S. to Launi Skinner: Come on, lady! You can‘t find a slot in your quest for world domination to put in a store somewhere in the four corners of the best borough on the planet? The fact that there are Starbucks outlets surrounding the town doesn‘t cut it.

If you can‘t expect Vancouverans to cross the street to grab a grande, how can you expect us to hop in the Subuaru and high-tail it on over to West Goshen? And don‘t tell me about Route 202 in Birmingham. In Seattle, they only have to ride the elevator 20 floors for Ethiopean Kampuchea Roast. There are stinkin‘ traffic jams on 202!

Actually, I shouldn‘t worry about this; I‘m mostly concerned for my friends and neighbors and bosses. See, I don‘t drink coffee. I drink Irish tea.

I get it at the mall.