Coffee and connecting
From the start coffee houses weren’t just about coffee, they were also a meeting place for men (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Women’s_Petition_against_Coffee) to discuss the important things of the day.
Hundreds of years later that has not changed, we still meet socially in coffee houses, some people work almost exculsively in them (http://jkontherun.com/category/coffee-break/) and with the advent of social media this is becoming more common. Looking at posts on twitter, coffee, meeting in coffee houses, or setting up coffee/meeting houses seems to be big on the agenda. People have called it ‘The Third Place’, not home, not work, but some other place to sit down and relax in. Some other place to connect to.
This brings me back to my last post and how I feel Starbucks does well at reaching out of the internet, using social media to connect to us. ‘Us’ as it’s customers. However I don’t feel like a customer, I feel connected, mostly by the social interacation with store staff (partners as they are called), the Starbucks twitter feed, MyStarbucks Idea’s and the other promotional offers, like the ‘free tall coffee after 2pm’ card I have been using.
Looking at the websites of Cafe Nero (http://www.caffenero.com/), Costa Coffee (http://www.costa.co.uk/) , Coffee Republic (http://www.coffeerepublic.co.uk/) for example, all I see and feel is the flat cold corporate image of those brands. I see no twitter updates, I see no way to easily intereact with them, I see no attempt to connect with their customers. I don’t visit the other chains enough to know if their store staff do connect and intereact with customers and if there is a sense of community. I am sure in places there are.
If you know a place like that, either a chain or indepentant store please let me know if the comments.
(Written in Starbucks inside the Glades in Bromley. Had the best tall Americano I have had for a long while)
