{"id":1,"date":"2019-02-04T00:57:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T00:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobgrier.com\/blog\/?p=1"},"modified":"2019-09-06T20:50:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T20:50:41","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/04\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How Starbucks didn\u2019t kill the indie coffee shop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Everyone is being mean to Howard Schultz since he announced his presidential ambitions, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/op-eds\/i-wont-touch-his-coffee-but-howard-schultz-is-still-one-of-my-heroes\">so I wrote\u00a0something a little nicer for the\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/op-eds\/i-wont-touch-his-coffee-but-howard-schultz-is-still-one-of-my-heroes\">Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em>. An excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Though it seems weird to think about now, there was a time when people genuinely worried that Starbucks would kill off all the local coffee shops. \u201cStarbucks\u2019 policy is to drop \u2018clusters\u2019 of outlets in urban areas already dotted with caf\u00e9s and espresso bars,\u201d warned Naomi Klein in her 1999 book&nbsp;<em>No Logo<\/em>. \u201cThis strategy relies just as heavily on an economy of scale as Wal-Mart\u2019s does and the effect on competitors is much the same.\u201d The company\u2019s aggressive approach to real estate deals was seen as an unfair competitive advantage and brought on at least one antitrust lawsuit from an aggrieved coffee shop owner.<\/p><p>As recently as 2007, the idea that local shops could not only survive but even thrive in competition with Starbucks was taken as Slate-worthy contrarianism. But as was evident even then, America\u2019s appetite for specialty coffee wasn\u2019t a fixed pie to be divvied up between mom and pop shops and big corporations. Schultz\u2019s company helped nurture a market that had barely existed before, introducing Americans to unfamiliar Italian (or at least Italian-ish) espresso drinks in a comfortable atmosphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>For a longer, more detailed take, see also my\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-caffeine-empire\">2008 piece from Doublethink<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone is being mean to Howard Schultz since he announced his presidential ambitions, so I wrote\u00a0something a little nicer for the\u00a0Washington Examiner. An excerpt: Though it seems weird to think about now, there was a time when people genuinely worried that Starbucks would kill off all the local coffee shops. \u201cStarbucks\u2019 policy is to drop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}