Bryant Simon on Starbucks|part 1

December 9, 2009 • Comments Off

I first met Bryant Simon in 2006. At that time, he was in the early stages of researching Starbucks impact on culture and consumerism. We traded emails about nuanced Starbucks happenings from store-level operations to broader marketing matters. He was curious to learn the rationale behind a lot of the decisions he was experiencing in Starbucks stores. As a former Starbucks marketer known for sharing tribal knowledge about the company, I enjoyed my email threads with him and my face time with him when he visited Austin in 2007.

Since he’s a history professor at Temple University, Bryant comes at the Starbucks story from a unique angle. He uses this unique perspective to make interesting observations about Starbucks.

After a few years of research and thousands of hours spent observing Starbucks from hundreds of its stores, Bryant Simon has released his observations on Starbucks in EVERYTHING BUT THE COFFEE: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009).

It’s a worthwhile read. We’ll be sharing Bryant’s take on Starbucks impact on culture and consumption over the next three days.

We begin with a highly condensed verbatim abstract of chapter two in his book. This chapter is titled, “Predictability the Individual Way.”

Bryant Simon writes …

“Built for the postneed, status-seeking, civically challenged world, Starbucks offered an important variation on McDonald’s-style, branded predictability, sameness and comfort are certainly important for highly mobile yuppies, bobos, and creative class types.” (pg. 60)
“Predictability doesn’t just happen. Starbucks works hard to stage this easily consumed familiarity, starting with the coffee itself. Reluctant to franchise, Starbucks owns most of its outlets.” (pg. 65)

“Starbucks baristas also tend to look alike—usually smiling and usually young. This, too, is no accident. As thick as a chemistry textbook, the Starbucks employee manual leaves little to chance. It provides workers with a script outlining exactly what they should say and the tone they should strike. It spells out what they can and can’t wear and what they can’t show of themselves.” (pg. 66)

“Making every Starbucks look familiar and feel safe requires heavy doses of policing, employee disciplining, and systemization. In other words, as McDonald’s expert George Ritzer suggests, it requires that Starbucks stores operate like McDonald’s franchisees. Indeed, as Starbucks grew, it became more like McDonald’s every day, turning consumption, work, and management into a series of predictable centrally controlled routines.” (pg. 71)

“There is a tipping point here, however. Too much sameness alarms rather than reassures, many bobos and creative class types; it cuts into their sense of individuality.” (pg. 76)

“In one last twist on the themes of sameness and placelessness, authenticity and consumer desire, Starbucks, in some ways, has begun to consume itself.” (pg. 81)