There are two nice coffee shops at the opposite ends of the small but relatively vibrant (pandemic notwithstanding) Downer Avenue area: Stone Creek Coffee at the north end, and Starbucks at the south. At this point, Stone Creek has the decisive edge in attracting business.
There are reasonable explanations and practical consequences. Stone Creek has not only reopened its sitting space, but has always had its courtyard, filled with wooden and metal seats and tables for people to have their lattes and enjoy the weather in a spread out fashion, doing some people watching or being watched as you either bring your laptop, read some quality literature, or chat with friends. If you simply walked up, sat down, and spend the whole afternoon reading without ordering a thing or talking to a soul, nobody would be there to hurry you along, but most people depart without hogging the spaces. The acceptance of the quid pro quo--you know, you're tacitly supposed to buy something--implictly involved is, for now, being observed with respect. Not only that, but if you go there either before or after hours--why I couldn't possibly know--the wi-fi works just fine. It never gets turned off.
Stone Creek also has short-order food made in a small kitchen in the back. Starbucks has food, but it's wrapped and not cooked on site. The inside part of the cafe is also brighter and more inviting, with more windows. It's just a happier-looking, more energetic place. Starbucks has never looked bright and inviting. It's positioning doesn't lend itself to it. That isn't its fault, but it is its disadvantage.
Not only that, but Starbucks hasn't yet brought back its tables to fill in its much smaller site; all drinks are still to-go. It has outside tables outlining the shop, but there are very few of them and no sense of the breezy coming-and-going that Stone Creek has. Stone Creek also has curbside ordering, still active and still safer than doing it inside, though it has recently began serving inside customers without masks.
That is a detriment to Boswell Books, Milwaukee's best independent bookseller, next door to Starbucks.
It used to have its southern French doors open to people who came and went from it either before or after their bookgazing, pre-pandemic, with an in-between room to set up laptops and pound away. That room is now closed. The combination of businesses gave either valuable commerce in the kind of relaxed style that sophisticated East Siders are known for. Not allowing Starbucks customers to settle in and do their reading at that end of Downer hurts the bookstore fiercely and, I would think, vice versa.
Much of book shopping consists of previous browsing, and any discouragement in addition to Amazon or other online booksellers can do and has done serious damage. I live just a block away and I'm always coming over and browsing. There have been nothing like the crowds Boswell's used to have. It can't all be blamed on the slowness of the public's response post-pandemic. It just doesn't look like as much fun anymore.
Starbucks used to have Sunday newspapers available for purchase, too, but the franchise disposed with that practice before the plague. Tokenly, it offered an app that would give you many big-city newspapers at $69.99 per year. But I can't imagine anyone besides a journalism student wanting that overload of stimulation. Besides, the CVS down the block had, and still has, Sunday papers including the New York Times, so that isn't much of an inconvenience.
So Starbucks, I think, is down to its bare essentials and is, by any measure--all you have to do is look at any time during the day--near pointlessness. Unless you want one of its frappes, which are superior in both taste and accoutrements. Which is to say, its straws work.
They work because they're plastic. The plastic lids on their cups--remember, all orders are to-go there--have an odd slit into which straws are supposed to fit. Which is to day, they really don't. You have to make a special effort to get the straw into the slot, which has a kind of rectangular/oval shape, not round and not sufficiently spacious to just fit it without going to some trouble. But a plastic straw can be made to fit into that slot, and it springs right back to its original shape once it's inside.
Not so with paper straws, even those with an attempted stronger base, like the ones used at Stone Creek. I've tried them. Horribly inadequate. They give you the same strange slot in their cup lids, then expect you to squeeze the paper-based straws into that. You can, but they don't rebound like the plastic ones. They also wear down much faster. They don't bend with resilience, either.
Frappes being what they are, just down from ice milk, they force you at times to stir the contents so that they remain fluid. But doing that wears out the paper-based straws, too. They've tried to make reinforced paper that feels like it can withstand the usage, but it isn't working.
It all reminds me of the kinds of straws we used to have at St. Joe's School, where some of the kids insisted to use them (or maybe they did because it was in front of them, like so many of us did because it was there and we assumed some authority demanded it--come on, you can't tell me you never did), but they flattened out way before they were finished and the milk dripped out of them. Like, total ick. I never used them. I just opened the damn carton and swallowed.
Look, I get it: I'm supposed to encourage people to use the paper-based straws so they can be more easily recycled. But here's a place where environmental awareness meets practicality and loses. When you consider the number of straws Stone Creek uses throughout its franchise, and the same for Starbucks, I'm telling you it makes a difference. But here's something else: At the Starbuck's, they don't include the straw with the frappe order. You have to ask for it.
Maybe the staff has been ordered from on high to make it optional as a cheesy, default way to express awareness. Maybe it's a local option. But certainly, fewer plastic straws will be used over the long run.
It really is about the only reason I return to Starbucks, which used to have some lively traffic coming and going. Now it's only good for loyalists who only have to walk two blocks to a very similar but far more logistically oriented place where there are far more clientele of all ages. It's dying, and considering that nothing has changed about its now normal post-pandemic operation, I think the top folks are waiting for it to do so. At worst, over the past two months, I've been the third person in line regardless of time of day. The others, obviously, have gone up the street to a happier, more vibrant locale.
If the plastic straws are the only things that are keeping people from abandoning Starbucks altogether, it may not be enough to keep it open. Its last straw is still waiting to be played.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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