Starbucks to Close 600 Locations

Does Starbucks reflect entire coffee market?
There’s no numbers on coffee shops besides Starbucks or the locations of these coffee shops that are being closed down. I’d be more willing to see some significance if it was coffee shops in general or coffee shops in bookstores and the like. Starbucks went crazy with expansions. I mean, how many times did you hear about a location where Starbucks put up two coffee shops on the same street, on the theory that people would not want to cross the street?

The general state of the economy should have been the warning signs that high-end, redundant coffee shops were in trouble. I’m not convinced that this maps to coffee shops in libraries.

Let’s look at these factors:

1) There seems to be evidence as the economy dips down library use starts rising. That means there’s more bodies in the location of the library and less people downtown shopping.

2) Starbuck was on the high end of the market and sell their name as much as their coffee. To say Starbuck is having trouble is like saying because a designer jean company is having trouble, people are not buying jeans. I would wager that though if Guess jeans or one of the designer brands sees a drop, it’s not necessarily reflected by other companies like Lees. People are probably not going to the library just for the coffee, but it adds to atmosphere and can probably have a positive affect on socialization and community development.

3) If your coffee shop is local, you have much more flexibility in pricing and targeting the local area. Maybe have teas, shakes for the kids, etc.

Honestly , this seems like a stretch and a bit of FUD myself by those who don’t like things like coffeeshops, cafes etc. in libraries.

After all, what’s the risk? If the coffee shop is being done by a third financial party and they can’t keep it running, what is the library out? It tried something and it didn’t work. If the library didn’t invest in it besides space, the space can be used for something else. If the library has invested some money in it, hopefully it was money that was a reasonable risk. Of those libraries with cafes around here, I don’t know of any that use Starbucks coffee.