The New "We're Not Starbucks" Starbucks on 15th Ave
Today at two o'clock, we joined a gaggle of newspaper photographers, reporters, and bloggers all itching to get a sneak-peek of the new beer- and wine-serving, de-logo-fied Starbucks on 15th Avenue, that officially opens to the public tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. After waiting for a few minutes outside while a TV news crew finished up, we were brought in for a long Q & A with senior project manager D. Major Cohen, who nimbly handled questions about why Starbucks is so interested in having a store (well, apparently there will be three of them here in Seattle eventually) that's not all "Starbucks-y."
Having had a peek inside, it's obvious that criticisms that the new "15th Ave Coffee & Tea," as the signage puts it, has ripped off its next-door neighbor Smith aren't going away any time soon. Woodblock print-style logo? Check. Long table of rough reclaimed wood? Check. Vaguely Western and/or rustic, farm-themed? Check.
In defense of Starbucks, our guess is that the similarity is owed more to a top-down look at style rather than outright design copying. The single most interesting thing we took away from the junket was how much effort Starbucks puts into design, as though the success or failure of the business had more to do with customer comfort within the store rather than the quality of the coffee itself. Admittedly, the new 15th Ave Coffee & Tea does feature hand pulled espressos from a LaMarzocca machine, rather than the bland auto-espresso machines the rest of the stores use. But it's interesting that when Starbucks "re-thinks" their business after a bloody year for their stock, the assumption is that the basic coffee is good enough; the problem must be elsewhere.
Overall, the new "neighborhood-style" coffeehouse feels like a smorgasbord of Capitol Hill hipster joints. They're going to have Starbucks ice cream by the scoop, though having never tried it we're unsure whether Molly Moon's has anything to worry about. Oh, and new retro-hip food to compete with Captain Black's chicken and waffles or whatever bacon-inspired fare other pubs are serving? Sardines!
The inside is pretty enough, with "reclaimed" being the buzz-word of the day. The long ten-or-so-seater table is made of two long planks from some sort of sailboat (you can see half-circle cut-outs at either end for the masts). The condiment bar is an old, upside-down tin trough, from a barn. The wall behind it is ceiling panels taken from some Seattle house. In the back corner of 1,800-foot space, the walls are papered with pages from a book of Greek philosophy.
The community aspect of the new store likewise feels a bit top-down. There's a stage where Cohen promises live music and poetry and the like, but the only names that really came up were that he'd been in discussions with the Intiman Theatre to handle staged-readings in the space, and Seattle Arts & Lectures, probably for poetry. Apparently, "local" includes some of the biggest arts orgs in the city, neither of which have anything to do with 15th Ave. or Capitol Hill.
The final impression we got--and one that the designers would probably not entirely disagree with--is that the new coffeehouse style is basically a laboratory where they're going to throw everything at it and see what sticks. The similarities to neighboring businesses are just as likely a tone-deaf corporate move by people who decided on the concept before choosing the location as anything more malicious. Based on what Starbucks is doing on 15th Ave., it would appear that the main experiment is trying to see whether there's an alternative to the cookie-cutter model they've been following; in other words, can Starbucks operate as a series of more independent, locally-oriented locations?
While interesting, it strikes us that logistically this is damn near impossible. Still, the 15th Ave Coffee & Tea house is better than many a Starbucks we've been to, and will probably be as popular as its traditional predecessor. As a national or global strategy, though, we doubt this approach will extend much beyond a local curiosity.
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