Wearing little more than foamed milk in the new issue of Playboy, the Women
of Starbucks have come to a newsstand near you.
Yes, the Seattle coffee retailer is ubiquitous, having ballooned like a
silicone implant from fewer than 100 stores in 1990 to more than 6,500 outlets
worldwide today. For better or worse, the humble daily ritual of grabbing a
cup of coffee has become near-synonymous with the retail chain with the
evergreen motif. And that's a fact that really grinds the beans of more than a
few protesters in this age of pervasive corporate branding.
After last week's vandalizing of several Starbucks franchises in downtown
San Francisco, the question comes up again: Why, exactly, does this company
inspire so much ire? More than just about any other big-name brand, Starbucks
is the brand a good many people love to hate.
The reasons seem to range from the sentimental (new Starbucks storefronts
tend to squeeze out independents) to the practical (they contribute to
increased parking and litter problems) and the political: The activist
organization Global Exchange claims that Starbucks has been less than
cooperative in the effort to implement Fair Trade policies in the struggling
coffee market.
Perhaps more to the point, the company has come to represent an insidious
sort of big-business inexorability and a particular brand of "lifestyle"
marketing epitomized by the company's own chief product. They're not selling
coffee so much as the "Starbucks Experience."
It's a company philosophy that has proved particularly susceptible to
criticism. McDonald's often faces resistance overseas, where it represents
Westernization. The arrival of a Gap store in a previously "funky"
neighborhood can be interpreted as an irreversible slide toward homogeneity.
But few retail businesses have roused such an arsenal of resentment as the
Seattle-cloned coffee bar.
"I don't think Starbucks makes it easy to like them," says Kieron Dwyer,
the San Francisco cartoon artist who was hit with a cease-and-desist order a
few years ago for his parody of the Starbucks logo (featuring the words
"Consumer Whore" encircling the familiar mermaid mascot).
There's a petition circulating in Dwyer's neighborhood, the Outer Sunset
along the N-Judah line, to try to keep a proposed Starbucks from opening. It's
not the first time Starbucks has faced organized opposition in the city.
Residents and shopkeepers in Hayes Valley, Cole Valley and North Beach have
successfully lobbied to keep out the green monster.
As for Global Exchange, Fair Trade Organizer Valerie Orth says the group
coerced Starbucks into carrying Fair Trade-certified coffee in many of its
cafes, paying farmers a competitive price. But she claims the company has
committed to carrying less than 1 percent non-"sweatshop" coffee, a far
smaller figure than the 5 percent Global Exchange thought it had agreed to.
"We felt they negotiated in bad faith," says Orth.
Still, the fast-growing company will not be deterred. "We have very visible
real estate," says spokeswoman Audrey Lincoff. "We garner a lot of attention.
Because of that, people feel very comfortable using Starbucks as a backdrop.
"Some of the activists have said they (target us) because we are a company
that cares. We do have a good track record of social responsibility. Perhaps
it can never be enough for some groups."
Playboy's Women of Starbucks model Signe Nordli holds-up a copy of the magazine where she is the issue covergirl during a public appearance in Seattle, Washington on July 28, 2003. Nordli appears on the cover of Playboy's September issue which goes on sale July 29. Nordli, a 20-year old college student from Anaheim, California who worked as a barista in a Fullteron, Califronia Starbucks store, was one of several female Starbucks employees chosen to pose nude for photos published in the men's magazine. REUTERS/Anthony P. Bolante
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She takes pains to make it clear that the baristas who posed for Playboy
will suffer no consequences from their decision.
"We don't support it or endorse it," Lincoff says. "We have a very diverse
workforce, and we embrace that diversity. We don't tell our partners" --
Starbucks franchises and their hires are "partners" -- "what they can and
can't do in their personal time."
It's amusing to note that the headline just below the cover teaser for the
Starbucks girls au naturel ("Warning: Contents REALLY Hot!") calls attention
to a Playboy investigative piece on SARS. The Starbucks phenomenon has been
described as a kind of "virus," most notably in Naomi Klein's "No Logo," the
bible of anti-corporate advocacy.
Starbucks, the author writes, seems "to understand brand names at a level
even deeper than Madison Avenue, incorporating marketing into every fiber of
its corporate concept -- from the chain's strategic association with books,
blues and jazz to its Euro-latte lingo."
For some, that premeditated packaging is evil personified. The anti-
Starbucks bumper sticker ("Friends Don't Let Friends Go to Starbucks") is
almost as widespread as the stores themselves. There's an "I Hate Starbucks"
Web site (www.ihatestarbucks.
com) run by a reclusive Virginian who goes by the initial B. ("I don't want
to get sued," he e-mails). The chain's "evil" reputation was even parodied in
the "Austin Powers" film series.
"No matter how much they try and portray themselves as a place to kick back
and have your triple latte," says Dwyer, the cartoonist, "they definitely have
that viral thread running through."
The company's go-go self-portrait feeds the dismaying perception that there
is no slowing down our accelerated culture. "It's a grab-and-go sort of thing,
" says Dwyer. "They really do draw people who seem completely self-oriented.
They're mostly single people going in, double-parking, being irritable that
their order isn't exactly what they asked for.
"And it's partly a fashion thing. It's an accessory." Special prosecutor
Kenneth Starr, Dwyer recalls, couldn't begin his press conferences during the
Clinton sex scandal without his morning grande.
It should be noted that Dwyer readily admits to a long-standing addiction
to Starbucks Frappuccinos -- which ended, of course, the day the lawsuit
arrived.
"I was hooked, and it was a costly way to get unhooked . . . I was making
fun of myself and people like me when I made that parody logo."
Out near Ocean Beach, local cafes such as the Corner Cup and Seabiscuit are
concerned that an influx of Starbucks will erode their business faster than
the California coastline.
"There's a whole sociological set that happens around these locations,"
says Barb Reusch, a worker-owner at Other Avenues Food Store, one of several
businesses circulating the petition to keep Starbucks out of the area. The
proposed coffeehouse will attract smokers on the sidewalk, she says. It will
cause serious parking logjams. And, from the perspective of a health food
store, the chain's syrup-flavored, whipped-cream-topped concoctions are bad
news: "For us, even though coffee is not especially good for you, all that
synthetic junk is even worse."
But those are all specific, debatable concerns. The real issue is one of
aesthetics. A new Starbucks on the block will "spoil the flavor," Reusch says.
"We have a real nice, old-fashioned neighborhood feel here. It's sweet,
comfortable, inviting, not very slick. It's how a lot of neighborhood places
used to be in San Francisco."
One customer who signed the petition, Reusch recalls, suggested they tell
the Starbucks people to "put it in the mall. That's what malls are for."
Dwyer, the cartoonist, tells the story of how Starbucks became the official
kiosk vendor of the comic book industry's biggest annual convention the very
year his face-off with the company occurred. Fellow cartoonists would walk by
his booth on the way back from the espresso bar, holding their Starbucks cups
aloft.
"Fight the power, dude!," they'd holler. Sympathetic to the plight of the
little guy, they still needed that second cuppa joe to get through the
afternoon.
Whatever small victories the anti-Starbucks faction can take solace in, it
would appear the larger battle has already been won.
"We continue to be a community gathering spot wherever we are around the
world," says Lincoff, the company spokeswoman "And we continue to find a way
to enrich people's daily lives."
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
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