Add your own egg

Our nearest Starbucks is located in a shopping centre we visit every now and then. Recently we’ve tried to make sure we visit the centre round about 9.30 am because at that time in the morning the car park is almost empty and the whole place has that early morning start of the day feel to it. An hour later that atmosphere has gone completely, never to return until the following morning.

We quite like Starbucks although we would never visit the shopping centre merely to drink coffee there. We aren't quite that far gone. We used to dislike the coffee but presumably something has changed and presumably it wasn’t Starbucks coffee. No matter, coffee isn’t really the theme of this post.

As we sit there over our coffee watching the car park fill up we always notice how many Starbucks customers spend their time tapping away at laptops or conducting what is obviously some kind of informal business meeting. Others are fiddling with their phones, keeping the kids under control or just chatting. There is a quiet buzz, a sense that this is a brief period of deserved relaxation before other things have to be done, other matters have to be attended to.  

Although this coffee shop is a tiny part of a massive international business, the atmosphere feels relaxed, informal and somehow permanent. As if the place has been here in this shopping centre for many decades and will still be here for decades to come. Why is that? I look around the place, study the corporate decor, the tables, chairs, colour scheme, coffee displays and so on but I can’t really see how it’s done.

Presumably a great deal of effort goes into creating a corporate Starbucks ambience which in turn leads to the coffee shop atmosphere they want and as far as I can see it works. From a more traditional perspective it may not be the real thing because there is no amiable proprietor exchanging pleasantries, no obvious regulars and only a massive car park visible through the windows.

Yet there is that relaxed atmosphere - no doubt about it. As a coffee shop it works exactly as it should, as if someone somewhere calculated it to the nth decimal place and got it right. It works and the customers obviously absorb what it offers and like it whether they think about it or just accept it. In which case, where does this successful coffee shop atmosphere come from?

To answer that question we would usually think in terms of deep corporate cunning, psychological cues embedded in the advertising and product placement, the decor and the layout of tables and chairs, the colour schemes, materials, textures and an artfully placed settee all designed to pack them in with an illusory aura of spacious informality.

Except it isn’t an illusion because simple observation suggests that customers also create the atmosphere - the buzz, the sense of relaxation. They help create what they want, what brings comfort and a sense of belonging. Belonging to what? It doesn’t matter – something known, accepted and almost cool if you play it right. Everything customers do adds to the atmosphere, builds on the corporate template by flavouring it with the real thing, the human touch, the sense of contact and belonging.

One could easily go further and suggest that people like the reassurance of a massive corporate presence which is unmistakably there but isn’t obtrusive. Perhaps they like its sense of permanence, because corporate entities such as Starbucks are so massive that they do exude an air of permanence. Desirable or not, it works.

And what is not to like about comfortable permanence? One where you help make your own atmosphere? As genuine as a packet of cake mix perhaps, but even with cake mix you are sometimes required to add your own egg – to make it partly your cake rather than wholly theirs.