

From Starbucks to Barbucks: Hyperreal Gentrification in Your Neighborhood



Starbucks became an international phenomenon relatively quickly, and represented a specific kind of American brand: something the world (and Americans) saw as more sophisticated than how McDonalds globally represented America, and something we readily adopted because of a strange sense of gentrified familiarity. By 2000, being able to afford drinks at Starbucks came to mean being a sort of sophisticate ... someone with things to do and people to see. It wasn't provincial, it wasn't homely, and it wasn't a necessity to your daily life. We're not talking about any ordinary cup of coffee ... this was a Frappucino!

Just as McDonalds represented an American inclination toward a idealized 1950s car hop/burger joint, a development with a Starbucks meant that the developers were trying to encourage that sense of sophisticated urbanity. (Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.)

But something was clearly off. Almost like a Jean Baudrillard manifesto, stepping into a Starbucks and ordering a coffee in Italian had a certain degree of hacky falseness to it. The more you travel, the more you notice cookie-cutter-designed Starbucks stores all over the world, in both urban and rural areas. They all serve the same kinds of coffee, mixed in ways that are easily standardized (and that you can just as easily mix at home). Most importantly, these spaces feel comfortable and sophisticated because they've been deliberately engineered to feel that way. There's no magic pixie dust that makes it a better environment than sitting on your porch, or a smarter or more calming place than your local library. It's just a place to buy coffee.

Except that what you're buying is not coffee. You're buying a branded lifestyle, a version of reality that is structured to best appeal to you as you see yourself through coffee drinks, comfortable chairs, and Billie Holiday tunes playing in the background. It's not about ordering in Italian, it's not about "your special drink," and it's not about an alternative lifestyle. It's about making you feel like Starbucks is your brand; like the design and products--bland and gentrified as they may be compared to real Italian cafes--safely integrate into your personality. It's your personal portal to sophistication, happiness, or whatever else you're missing in your life that a $5 cup of coffee can give you.

Architectural branding is the kind of work that fetches big bucks for architecture firms. Gensler Architects, for example, designed Apple Stores to make users (i.e. you) feel like they're visiting some utopian, streamlined outpost of the cyperprep future. This design complements a branding scheme that's been standardized across the board: that Apple stuff is easier, better and more revolutionary than PC stuff. One only has to spend a moment in an Apple store to understand just how much of the environment has been designed to influence his or her behavior. It's even obvious when you casually look into an Apple Store.



With this in mind, recent news that Starbucks is starting to provide an evening menu of wine, cured meats, and cheeses means that Starbucks will be re-branding its store designs to appeal to both daytime coffee people and nighttime wine and cheese people. Regions like southern California are already beginning to see these changes. "But why re-brand? I'd be open to trying Starbucks for a bit of booze in the evening," you might think. But the very fact that you automtically equate Starbucks as a go-to place for wine is strong enough evidence that some degree of architectural rebranding needs to be done.

So how exactly does a company transition between being a natural, organic-feeling coffee house to a natural, organic-feeling coffee and wine house? This is Starbucks' key issue. The market for $4 to $6 coffees is already saturated. After 40 years, Starbucks has done such a good job at branding itself that it's hard to imagine Starbucks selling drinks that aren't sweet or coffee-related. In fact, when I read "Starbucks wine," I immediately imaged a sweet wine, and those are exactly the kinds of name and design branding issues they are going to have to deal with head on.



But the spaces and products are still designed to appeal to that seemingly sophisticated, seemingly urban, and seemingly thoughtful target market of people who expect a simple glass of wine to cost ten to fifteen dollars. More importantly, these people may come to believe that a wine and coffee bar named "15th Avenue Coffee and Tea" is a local spot, where a few local artists were asked to speckle their works around a place that served decent but pricey coffee, wine and snacky things.

Of course, they'd be wrong. 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea would actually be a space that's designed in a way that safely achieves the goals of the Starbucks Corporation while making you feel like you're safely experiencing something sophisticated and urban. Starbucks wants you to feel like a localite enjoying a local brand, when in actuality you will be experiencing an international chain that utilizes gentrified hyperreality to resemble a cool neighborhood spot. Naturally, it'll feel cool and urban and sophisticated and European. But it won't actually be any of those things.

It'll still be a couple of rooms where an international corporation is using every trick it's got to sell you a $5 cup of coffee. And soon, a $10 glass of wine.

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