Richmond coffee fight brews in S.F.
Posted by TheShot on 06 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Local Brew, Starbucks
The front-page headline on today’s SF Examiner concerned an all too familiar story. An Inner Richmond neighborhood group wants to see a precedent-setting halt put to Starbucks’s expansion plans in the neighborhood: Richmond coffee fight brews in S.F. - Examiner.com. Starbucks is planning to open a 750-square-foot store at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Geary Boulevard.
Jesse Fink, who heads the Clement Street Merchants Association (and owner of the notable Toy Boat Dessert Cafe for the past 25 years), is asking for a landmark case from the the SF Board of Supervisors. Fat chance, really, and not just because SF isn’t Beijing’s Forbidden City.
For one, this neighborhood case isn’t about the integrity of the entire city. It’s not even about anything more than coffee. Although that corridor of Geary Blvd. is already a fast food chain/strip mall eyesore, you can’t stop local residents from frequenting their beloved Starbucks like lemmings to a cliff dive. While Toy Boat puts up pretty unique competition, many consumers will gravitate to Starbucks’ branded milkshakes over the real deal no matter what (and in Toy Boat’s case, I mean real milkshakes).
And as Carmel-by-the-Sea proves, any neighborhood where Starbucks is locked out can suffer a malaise of poor espresso standards without the motivation of adequate competition. Unfortunately for Jesse Fink and the Clement Street Merchants Association, you cannot outlaw bad taste.
UPDATE: Sept. 13, 2007
Surprise, surprise. SF supervisors said “enough is enough,” voting 9-1 in overturning the Planning Commission’s June approval: Supervisors deny Starbucks permit for new S.F. store. Jesse: I’m impressed.
2 Comments »
on 27 Jan 2008 at 11:02 pm -06:00T 1.jesse fink said …
I just read this comment on “how this is not about the integrity of the whole city”…you missed the point of this whole case. It IS about our city, our neighborhoods.
Do you want the neighborhoods of S.F. to end up looking like Long Island, Dallas,
Burlingame…that’s what’ll happen before your eyes if we let it. We have a unique city and it WILL loose it’s individuality if we let it.
on 28 Jan 2008 at 8:55 am -06:00T 2.TheShot said …
While we clearly agree in sentiment — every downtown in America looks pretty much interchangeable with every other these days — we don’t exactly agree in execution.
Perhaps the core problem are consumers who willingly, using their own dollars, blight their own neighborhoods on the receiving end of national marketing campaigns. But making the limitation of consumer choice the foundation of such a campaign is waging a losing battle — just as it is a lost cause to use the legal system in an attempt to prevent people from doing something stupid (the proliferation of ridiculous warning labels aside).