Are commercial "third places" a dying breed?
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You'd have thought I'd have insulted their family. I had multiple people become indignant with "I'm a poor college student! I can't afford that! No way! Do you know how expensive school is?!?!". They're paying at least $3/night on coffee minimum anywhere they go, and often more.
EDIT: quick followup to a bunch of answers. I'm not sure I said it was completely irrational, but... weird. This was just in the last several years - people are paying $400+/credit hour, and using credit/debit cards for everything. Yes, I remember only having a few $ in my pocket, back when the world lived on cash, and conserving every dollar was of the utmost importance. Charging people $1/night... inevitably on a card... nets you about .70c. My point was to try to at least break even, and provide a service to some folks. Making $4/night from 5-6 people, then spending $5 in coffee/tea/snacks... I'm losing money. I guess if I made it up in volume and sold it to a VC, I'd have been rolling in it. As it was, I didn't. It was an idea I floated by people, and it was not received well.
Thank you for the responses.
but of course, the coffee they buy at the station is worth the $3 (apparently), and the location was free in their minds. Therefore, the comparison is to have to pay another $3 for coffee else where and then bring it into this space they rent (and pay another $1). That's obviously sounds like a bad deal.
Also, in a college students mind, your value comp is a Netflix subscription.
$1 a night (as suggested by sibling) or even $3 a night would have been an instant sell.
Yes, they study at a Sheetz and buy a $3 coffee each time, but I doubt they study every night, in fact I would suspect that those who do that only do it a few times a month before a big test or something.
I've always liked working in a third space more than home, but there are also a lot of factors that go in to the places I pick and those evolve over time.
In my current life stage I generally spend at least $10/d in one, though it used to be a lot less when I was in college. In any case, I'd still balk at allocating $300 or even $100 for a space I hadn't hung out in for long enough to figure out how I feel about all of the various factors that matter.
This might be a difference between people who have come to think of their time/productivity as money or at least a resource to cultivate.
Many years ago it was very hard for me to justify a new laptop for purely personal use. One day I was preparing for a non-leisure trip that I'd otherwise have to miss out on paid work for. Even though the trip was short, it was easy to justify the purchase when the shift in opportunity cost covered the laptop.
A few other thoughts, in case you haven't tried them:
- Assuming these are mostly, say, students under the age of 25 or so--make it easy for parents to gift these memberships (whether that's a subscription or by paying for a gift card) and focus on marketing to them instead.
- See if an N-visit pass/bundle/card works. Might create a little more commitment than pure drop-in, but also avoid aversion to paying for something you might not end up using.
- On top of pure drop-in or a pass/bundle approach, leave some clear benefits to the unlimited pass (placement/scheduling preference, bring-a-friend, locker to store stuff in, etc.)
- If they won't be too disruptive, market something like a bring-a-friend subscription to more stable school-adjacent users like tutors, and then offer the students and tutors both a small referral discount if the students pick up their own pass.
For those rare times where it could have been needed, we tended to use the University library...or literally any space on campus. Or studied at home for those of us that commuted.
Driving/Walking to a dedicated place would have been seen as wasted time better used elsewhere (studying/partying)
The sheetz is a scene. The library is a scene. That's what matters. If I spend $29 to use your place, it's not a scene unless a bunch of other people pay $29.
Anyway, the premise of your sales pitch was your-scene-sucks. I'm not surprised it didn't go over well. You weren't eating your own dogfood.
For me, as an immigrant in both countries, it's essential to have those places, and the lack of them made me depressed, sad, and even suicidal (during the Swedish winter).
Not having someone to talk to is sad and unhealthy. Let's not make this an endangered species; it is a public health issue.
But, we are making local businessowners an endangered species. How? Ever-increasing regulation, so the only ones left with a budget willing navigate the federal, state, and local regulations - you guessed it, large megacorps.
Sounds good, doesn't work. The chance that the stranger has something in common with me, and he's in a mood to talk to me, is extremely low.
I kept going out and trying to socialize in such places, but it turned out to be a massive waste of time without even a single tiny success, and as my life keeps getting busier, the mental cost of being around loud strangers makes less and less sense.
Do you have a social activity that you've neglected with the lack of available friends? Or one that you're interested in but never had the chance to get involved with? This is perhaps mundane advice, but check if there's a group that does that activity and try to become a regular. They're always very welcoming to newcomers and you'll find yourself well established in the group after a few returns.
The reason for this renovations is to keep homeless individuals from camping inside the stores. The author goes off on a lot of tangents on topics he has strong/biased opinions (unions, corporate greed, etc) on but this was not highlighted as the primary cause.
Retail business is hard. You _do_ want to be charitable, but you also have to make profits to survive. Unfortunately even a single unsanitary individual present can drive away paying customers.
Not here to offer solutions, but I think it’s important to be point out the root cause.
Why wasn't that a problem for the previous 20 years of Starbucks existence?
Managers of NYC restaurants (including Starbucks) are usually quite familiar with specific local individuals that may not be welcome in their establishment, and have a variety of techniques for managing occupancy.
Anecdotally, when I moved about 10 years ago, it was uncommon to see homeless downtown. Then there was a transition period where they were allowed downtown in the evening but the police would clear them out in the early morning. Now, you can find them there at all times of the day.
The result can be seen everywhere - more car crashes and deaths, speeding, homicides, car theft, and also in smaller ways like subway turnstile jumping and loitering.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/rev...
20 years ago if you asked an unhoused person to leave a Starbucks, the fear of police, the general shame, etc. soft social pressure might have worked. Today's street residents might see the antagonism as entertainment, their position in the world as entitled, and sleeping in the police lockup as a clever free hotel hack. It's the same sense of entitlement that has them break someone's car window for something they can sell for $10 or walk out of a store with an arm full of merchandise.
In a way, the breach of social contract has become an entertainment aspect, if not a Robinhood-esque anti-society self-justification. The consequences of "being a constructive member of society" are too high for many, and the consequences of street life are ones you can mentally harden yourself against.
The Harvard Business School case study will be interesting: "How a $35 billion dollar company was defeated by random homeless people and their supporters.
Hostile architecture in public spaces outside of private businesses has increased, si private businesses are forced to become more hostile to maintain the same degree of success in the “we don’t want you here” wars.
At a busy intersection location where I would go to write daily, I'd see people following those rules and not bothering anyone. The store would be full of regular customers too.
After Covid, everything changed, and not just the decor. Wait times for orders increased massively, to the point where I'm wondering if staff are instructed to service the drive-thru people and Doordashers first. The customer experience now is woeful, and I haven't been back in months.
It's also to prevent free riding businesses from setting up shop. It's also to reflect market changes where fewer people were looking to them as third places in the first place.
> Retail business is hard. You _do_ want to be charitable
Mostly, no, retail businesses don't, they want to make money. To the extent appearing charitable helps with that, they may want to appear charitable, but that's instrumental, not an objective in itself.
False if you Google search the claim. https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-000329849244 “ Stores can’t write off a customer’s point-of-sale donations, because they don’t count as company income, according to tax policy experts. Customers can write off their own donations if they choose.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and...
But the rise of remote work and just an enormous class of workers looking for a free “office” has exploded. I’m sure they have been overrun with squatters buying 1 coffee and sitting for 7 hours — I bet their electricity and bathroom use alone makes them unprofitable. And they displace other transient customers who may have stayed and ordered more like when meeting a friend.
The model is broken at this tragedy of the commons scale.
They do not want to be in business of policing tables usage, and always run the risk of having to displace someone and having it escalate to some kind of video captured confrontation or shaming.
1 coffee every day works out to $80/month, and there is no commitment. And you can probably get by with a cheaper than $4 coffee.
I think the problem is that some WFH-types[1] have co-opted all the third places and have turned them into cheap workplaces, and coffee shops can't afford to be a coworking space (1 coffee for 7 hours as you say, which I'm sure more people do than some people here believe).
[1] I say this as a 100% remote person myself. But I've never felt right going to a coffee shop or restaurant and sitting there for more than an hour or so.
I see people get a morning coffee, get lunch and a drink, and then maybe something on their way out. It’s not a problem.
People don't know or like the other citizens in their towns and cities; the cultural and class-education divides are enormous. They also lack the temerity to use law enforcement to clean up (trash-, dirt-, and behavior-wise) public spaces to reserve them for those seeking socializing without disruption, or to use the legal system to push back on car-centric design, or to use their money on creative aesthetics to make it nicer to be in public spaces.
For readers looking to find Third Places the good news is that for now they do still exist throughout the city. However, without regular patrons that could always change. Seek out the cafes, reading rooms, and esoteric bookstores of Kensington Market. For world renowned collections of books and high speed free public Wi-Fi, one hundred Toronto Public Libraries are scattered throughout the city. For close quarters laughs many small bars host casual open-mic nights for everything from comedy to music to poetry.
I worked full time there for awhile and happily ate hundreds of meals there. Now I won'tbeven touch my favourite donuts (#sourcreamglazedgang)
I dont know if its a corporate level thing or a franchise level thing, but man, Tim's sucks now
[edit: i meant to say the quality of tim's food has gone down, not starbucks]
Not to mention that Tim's has a pretty bad reputation these days. The food and drink quality has dropped significantly and it isn't "cool". So at least for younger people it is likely not used as a third place. (Maybe this is a business opportunity for Tim's!)
[1] https://idahonews.com/news/local/donnelly-public-library-to-...
[2] https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2024/05/library-leader...
I was actually walking through it on Monday and noticed they've renovated all the stuff down by Bay and Front, there are LOADS of working areas and eating areas (with and without vendors, HUGE areas of eating area without vendors in fact) - I'm always super impressed by the path, it's a cool thing as someone not native to Toronto.
It does have public seating and tables, but they are spread out and often not very large. Also almost all of the shops are closed down on weekends (it is basically a ghost town) including the washrooms. Together this makes it seem much more like a large cafeteria and shops for people going to or from work. But I don't know if that qualifies it as the best third place.
That being said Toronto is decent at third places, we have decent park density and a good handful of public spaces like city hall and a good distribution of quality public libraries. So maybe I am just coming from a place of privilege.
From my EU perspective there's really no shortage of absurdly large shopping malls, bars, restaurants, pubs, stores and the like. They've just become so expensive to hang out in that it feels like you're being robbed at gunpoint which takes nearly all enjoyment out of it.
Some NYC Starbucks previously had tables, now have ... nothing at the window. Saw a guy with laptop in one hand and coffee in the other, standing there for at least 15 minutes, with occasional gymnastics to interact with laptop.
They could rebrand to Stanbucks.
See this event that may have caused Starbucks to recalculate its liability costs for providing a third place.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/15/1182359923/ex-starbucks-manag...
The tort environment in the US is gumming up the gears big time, and I believe it to be one of the undercurrents of change. Every business decision begins with the question “how do we limit our liability exposure?”.
One way is to separate the land asset from the business, so it is not at risk in lawsuits. This diminishes the incentive to create businesses, since the rent seeking portion of the business is even more profitable, and the productive portion of the business is less profitable.
Another is to have cameras everywhere. And another is to require higher prices and/or credit cards, to service as credit checks to filter customers.
And obviously, the last but not least, is to simply eliminate third places and eliminate potential interaction between employees and the broader public.
The triggering event could just as easily have been any number of other scenarios unrelated to third place usage patterns - and even unrelated to customer behavior. It was just an employment discrimination matter, period.
What’s more, this original triggering event was arresting a Black person who didn’t order anything, whereas most people who go to commercial third places (including most such Black people) do order at least one thing, even when they occupy their seat for far too long for the amount of money they spend.
It is tangentially related, but I believe the results were all the same. And perhaps the root cause was actually quelling the rage machine enabled by social media and the internet, but either way, the business decision remains:
How do we reduce the possibility this happens again? Regardless of how correct the Starbucks’ employees actions were in asking a non paying person to leave, and regardless of the fact that it is police who arrest people, not Starbucks employees, the event may have contributed to Starbucks’ executives concluding that the cost of providing the third place is not worth the benefit.
Looking at this another way, coffee and sugary drinks are a fungible commodity. If Starbucks is removing third places, why is there no competitor stepping in with a third place and taking their business?
That would be bad reasoning on Starbucks’s part. The problem that led to the liability was treating managers differently based on race, unrelated to the original trigger. Starbucks reasons better than that, and indeed as I note later in this comment, they have made no overall decision to stop being a third place.
> Looking at this another way, coffee and sugary drinks are a fungible commodity. If Starbucks is removing third places, why is there no competitor stepping in with a third place and taking their business?
These do exist. I’ve used them. And Starbucks still accommodates the third place usage pattern in many places inside and outside the US, including ones where lawsuits are a risk. They make a site-specific decision on what’s worth the tradeoff for them, not a nationwide or global decision.
Another sad reality is, even though it’s a corporate initiative, it’s only happening in specific countries. Whoever lives in Japan or South Korea, can attest to the fact how every global chain operates on a different level over there. Obviously “you shouldn’t drink on the street” cultural norm affects the business decisions, but still, it’s just sad to see how there are less and less people just hang out in public.
Is it a third place if you perform work there?
Seems to me that the "second place" has increasingly leaked into both the first and third places, making the distinction blurry.
To be fair, I think the reason that it formerly sought to be a community hub was also motivated by profit-seeking decisions. Maybe when there were a handful of locations the comfy seating was motivated by something other than profit. I imagine by the time they opened store number 20,000 that the design of the store, including the comfy seating, was very careful designed to seek profit.
Now, if I go out to work, maybe once a week, I try to limit my time there to an hour or two tops. I also try to go to places that are likely to be more empty at the moment and not preventing any person from finding a seat if they walk in.
Pros:
- You don't need to worry about battery or your laptop being stolen. Plenty of charging ports and space is open and owner is looking after.
- It's relatively quiet as most people were working themselves. Most seemed to be students.
- You pay by day/half-day. You have the space for the fulltime the place is open plus free black coffee and water. You can order extra.
Funnily enough, what you're describing is actually called anti-cafe
Owners must run an increasingly sleeker operation -- meanwhile, the consumer has to work more jobs or more hours to make ends meet, and doesn't have the time to lounge around and chat.
"Oh, but there aren't many other options, Starbucks put them all out of business". Well, at least it's cheap and convenient, I guess. Revealed preferences. Better hope that's enough!
If anything, if more people are now using coffeeshops as remote offices we are likely to see new shops catered to this opening up.
I went to do carry out from a local restaurant that had a small bar section as well as a restaurant section and thought I might have a drink while I waited. I wasn’t able to because the whole bar section was strictly for carry out now.
It seems boils down to revenue. If too many people sit down and use the area as a third place, then their revenue is capped if people stay too long.
Ideally it's should be a balance between customers and business. Go to the coffee shop, work for an hour then leave, to free up space.
I've also noticed they reduce seating to battle homeless folks from nesting in. It makes sense, I avoid stores if feel threatened from confrontational/aggressive people.
Nah, I think for it to be a proper third place, revenue and business should really really be secondary to everything.
Pvdoom, I completely agree. But it's VERY tough to ignore the real operating costs of keeping the space available. (I'm saying this as a former small business owner)
There are ways to fix these things, but it would be an unpopular opinion. Similar to the experience of exabrial's comment.
Everyone thinks everything is dying when their favorite whatever closes down or changes something.
Such is progress - there are plenty of "third places" - both commercial and non-commercial. And those places may shut down! And new ones will open up!
I would love to see more of these Third places. I hadn't heard of the concept, but it makes sense.
OTOH Italians with coperto are doing completely fine - pay extra to be seated - I assume this would be appalling to the average US consumer, though.
Sorry, perhaps mine is too European a perspective, but are you kidding?
Every time someone claims otherwise I ask for evidence but have never received any. (except for the decrease in the number of bowling alleys, ok you got me there that's ONE)
In support of my assertion, I give evidence of the constantly increasing number of public parks, public libraries, and places of amusement like maker spaces, restaurants, and the like.
For example, in the US there are approximately 500 more libraries today than there were 20 years ago. There are, depending on how you count, 100 more public parks.
It is easier and more engaging to be a pessimist though.
It's like how decrepitly old ham radio operators constantly complain about how the hobby is dying despite there being more licensees and a wider variety of projects being undertaken as part of the hobby than ever.
There are things to do and people to meet everywhere, on every street of every city, EVEN IN THE SUBURBS YOU PRETEND TO DESPISE, and people are too busy bitching on the internet about how there aren't to realize it.
I'm not sure how useful these absolute numbers are. At minimum I'd think you would need to normalize against population growth. According to Google, US population has grown by ~17% in the past 20 years.
But even separate from that, US-wide stats may not be informative about whether libraries and parks are over-crowded in any given state or metro area.
I wouldn't assume the root cause of these complaints is necessarily pessimism. Ironically, that assumption itself seems a bit pessimistic too!
Once you realize that, it’s obvious why “commercial third places” are dying.
People don’t want what they claim they want.
=3
I don't know if third spaces are indeed going away or not, but the argument here doesn't really address that.
By the way, if you don't like it don't buy Starbucks. Don't use Amazon. Don't use Twitter .(If you have the option). Not spending money/attention is more effective than complaining at changing companies' behavior.
wondering if libraries instead should start to serve drinks.
I've seen people with multiple spare laptop batteries along with their bags etc., clearly intent on long-term occupation of their chosen table. Wasn't like this before covid.
The article mentions public libraries, and the branch library near me looks good as a place for maybe getting some work done - albeit with more background noise than I'd like.
[1] Relatively prosperous, professional, urban, northern England
Was it Aubrey Plaza? https://youtu.be/EKEeHREK2nQ
NO this was a real dude not even a prank.
Perfect.
I really doubt it. Even the people who are conscious of this and think of themselves as "one of the good ones" probably don't do this even if they intend to. Is someone who sits in a place for 5-6 hours really going to purchase 6 coffees or lattes at $6+ each? That's a lot of money, but also that's a lot of coffee to drink in a day, and tons of calories if they're the fancier kind of drinks.
I have no doubt that some people do, but I bet it's fewer than many would believe. And places like Starbucks are likely working based off hard data rather than just guesses or feelings.
The furniture is usually hard wood and uncomfortable, the table height is not set for working so you’re hunched over your laptop, you don’t control the thermostat so it’s usually too hot or too cold, there’s liquid spills and sticky surfaces and crumbs everywhere, you usually have little space to yourself, there are other people talking and kids, etc., you have no privacy, you can’t get up and stretch your legs (or go to the bathroom) without leaving all your stuff behind or packing it up, etc.
Unless your home is a cardboard box under a bridge it’s probably a better place to work than a coffee shop. What’s the appeal?
Personally I work from cafes only once a week, and only for maybe 90 minutes at a time. I live in an area with a lot of cafes, so I switch it up each week and rotate through them. Some have better coffee, others have a better environment.
Lately the chains like Starbucks and Panera have become absolutely awful. Those are more like your description above. But the independent ones are usually better.
Without a seat, why am I paying?
A bit like an iPhone.
Maybe my country side, non city lifestyle is talking here. I drink coffee at home and at work. Not in between.
Minimum wage laws may have doubled over the last 30 years.
How many times have property prices increased in these same cities.... hmmmm?