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Cup of coffee, anyone?

By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 23rd, 2008 issue

There are two types of people in the world, those who despise Starbucks with an unwarranted passion, and those who need to drop a C-note — in this case about 100 Kč ($5.50) — for their daily fix of grande whatever.

Or, to frame it another way, Taylor Clark, in his book Starbucked, vents in the final section about the Seattle-based chain’s desire to “strip the richness and zest from our own lives.”
The familiar coffee shop, he insists, “diminishes the world’s diversity every time it opens a new café.”
Yet the company’s own PR material attests to the benign, nay, downright humanitarian nature of its work.
Starbucks, according to a blurb tucked at the bottom of one page, “provides an uplifting experience that enriches people’s lives one moment, one human being, one extraordinary cup of coffee at a time.”
So, by the year 2525, if man is still alive, the world should be one enriched place.
It all seems a little far-fetched, really. And judging by the turnout for last week’s press conference, local media types don’t care either way.
Radio personalities complained about predictable corporate answers in one-on-one interviews. A tardy journalist glanced at my mug, sloshing with “coffee of the day” and blurted “that’s not beer,” apparently realizing he had stumbled into perhaps the only venue in Prague with no keg of suds—unless frothed milk counts.
One writer strolled by with a tall—I mean venti—glass of water. “I’m Italian,” he said, “and this is . . .”—brushing a hand through the air dismissively rather than completing the thought.
The mayor of Prague 1, Petr Hejma, asked for tea.
Most settled in to listen, once the conference question-and-answer session began, hoping to glean something not already included in the press kit. Some comments overheard from the standing part of the standing-room-only crowd of reporters:
“I’ve heard this before.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“What do you think about the Patriots?”
OK, that was my contribution to the caffeine-induced malaise. Still, the event produced a couple of key tidbits. Before this latest store opened, 1,250 Starbucks cafés operated in 24 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa — roughly the same number as in greater Seattle alone. An executive confirmed the Palladium as the second home of Starbucks in Prague. Number 1,252 will be followed by an invasion of Poland.
Yes, the worst fears of those firmly entrenched on the anti-Starbucks side of things will be realized — glaring green circular signs from Bucharest to Moscow.
Oddly enough, the arrival of Starbucks does not destroy diversity in the coffee-shop market, as Clark asserts. Communities infiltrated by the Seattle giant generally experience a backlash, in the form of competitive independent operations — a kind of Coffee Heaven.
Oh, sorry.
Passers-by found the whole thing intriguing. They could mill around outside gawking at talking heads from local television or peer through the big windows located directly behind interviewees and — if lucky — appear on that evening’s newscast.
No one, however, seemed willing to bring up the great divide — the two camps at odds on the value of global chains, whether McDonald’s or Starbucks.
Funny thing is, you can often find the people who complain later sitting in a quiet corner sipping a latte.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com


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