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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

"The low-cost luxuriating necessary for healthy third places isn’t considered profitable." The author has a good point, although link in the article is to an ad for Toast, the not very good point-of-sale system. Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction.

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> Starbucks has removed chairs and tables, and covered power outlets, at many locations. This was not accompanied by a price reduction.

Wait, what!? I don't frequent Starbucks but this is insane to me. Where is this happening?

It happened during covid and they just haven't returned in the same way. It's unfortunate. I really hope the small late night coffee shop makes a return.

I live in a tier 3/4ish city and the coffee shop scene here is sad, but it was sad before COVID.

I’m not sure how Starbucks ( or most coffee shops) are really third places. I imagine most people immersed in their phones or laptops would tend to brush off any serious attempts at conversation.

To another comment about this being all about lack of walk ability in many places I’m also not sure that being able to walk around an urban core suddenly makes it a social center absent some persistent stimulus.

My experience is groups of friends and activity partners generally tend to happen without close physical proximity.

It depends, I used to live in a very urban area of the city and the ground floors of most residential buildings were commercial. The Starbucks that was near where I lived had a lot of recurring locals that simply did remote work there in the tables, so you could meet people because it was essentially most of the same people everyday and you eventually had some interaction so you ended meeting the others - like work/student colleagues from different companies. I actually didn't remote work at the time but I used the space to study because my apartment was damn small. But this was before COVID and sadly that Starbucks unit closed during covid and I ended up moving from that small apartment to a suburban house around the same time.

I have no idea what someone means when they say they live in city like this. What makes a city tier 1? What's the difference between tier 3 and tier 4? What's worst tier? When does something move from "not-a-city" to the worst tier?

It’s an amalgamation of income/wealth potential, population size, and relative desirability amongst the general populace to (reflected in land/housing prices).

Obviously, there is no objectively true ranking, just people’s opinions.

Generally I go by desirability (which includes jobs, amenities, etc.) then population size, but as others have pointed out it's a loose metric that doesn't measure anything objective. To give some very subjective examples:

Tier 1: LA, NYC, SF, Chicago, Seattle

Tier 2: Denver, DC, Austin, Minneapolis, San Diego, Houston, Philadelphia

I'm in Madison, WI which is barely a city but ranks high in desirability pretty consistently and has housing prices to match.

Having moved from SLC and subsequently lived in several major west coast cities (Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland), it's always surprised me that the cities recognized for their amazing coffee all have way less late-night coffee options than meek little Salt Lake. I haven't really been there in a decade so maybe that has changed, but they had several shops open til after midnight.

(Shout out to any of the folks who used to frequent Greenhouse Effect in the early aughts, before it got bought out and turned into a purely profit driven venture by Jimmy and his dad).

I'd guess that the drastically different laws and norms around alcohol explains this difference.

I'm sure that plays into it, though the laws really aren't all that weird anymore, and the same people that can't drink alcohol in Utah also tend to not drink caffeine.

Restaurants removing chairs does indeed sound insane. But I imagine it's on high-rent areas that want to focus only on take-outs.

I mean, the high-rent areas that exist today are also insane, and them creating extra insanity is just expected.

In NYC Starbucks where this was done, square footage (rent) is unchanged. People now stand around.

That is... I don't even know how to understand this.

People just stand around the tables were? Are they ok with this? Does it fit more people?

First they took the chairs and people stood at the tables. Then they took the tables and people stand by the windows or counter. Those who know other options will leave or not enter, but there's enough visitors in midtown who can visit a location once and never return. If it's particularly hot or cold weather, standing inside may be better than sitting outside.

Time will tell if Starbucks fractures into Sitbucks and Standbucks.

Starbucks had a moment in the media spotlight when a store called the cops on two black men accused of loitering: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/us/starbucks-philadelphia...

In response, they updated corporate policy so that you don't have to buy anything to occupy a chair: https://www.eater.com/2018/5/21/17375806/starbucks-no-purcha... https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/use-of-the-third-pl...

Predictably, every chair is now occupied by a sleeping homeless person.

So now their choice is to either remove all the chairs, or potentially be mean to someone, and receive a firestorm of criticism. You can see which one they chose.

See also how MTA has removed all the benches from its stations, for the same reason: https://hellgatenyc.com/train-stations-should-have-benches

Maybe it's my European perspective, but i feel like Starbucks has fallen several levels down in terms of it's price perception. Simply put, they haven't increased their prices like... ever. I remember very well pricing on some items and they are about the same in nominal euros as they were 15-18 years ago. They went from definitely upscale to cheap-ish - not the sheapest, but certainly not premium by any measure. And yes, no more outlets in most locations, and more limited seating. Why is that? idk. I loved it the way it used to be and would pay more to keep it that way.

And yes, certainly the kind of people visiting them as well as the kind of people working there has fallen along with their price niche.

That is not necessarily true all over Europe. In my area prices were increases somewhat recently and I now decided against going there anymore. However, they did not change any seating inside, everything stayed somewhat tge same

They make high margins on $7 Frappuccinos.

Coffee prices in general have been falling for decades. The 2011 price peak was unusual and resulted in far higher prices than in 2001 and makes the current price spike less noticeable. https://dripbeans.com/coffee-price-history/

More efficient farming has largely offset inflation just as with most other agricultural commodities resulting in fairly flat prices over time barring occasional spikes.

Well in a way, all small cafes compete with each other and it doesn't have to be about coffee (and definitely not about raw coffee prices as agri commodity, which are certainly <1% of their gross revenue). Somehow i have to pay twice as much for a burger in many joints, vs 15 years ago, about 1.5x as much for an espresso elsewhere, but exactly as much in Starbucks, and that gets me thinking.

It’s well over 1% of their gross revenue and why your coffee shop didn’t need to raise prices as much as your burger joint.

Also independent coffee joints generally get pricing wrong from a business perspective. But that’s a different question.

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