Latest news with #TheGreatGoodPlace
Mint
6 days ago
- General
- Mint
The importance of ‘third places' in a disconnected world
A 25-year-old client tells me, 'I spend all my week working from home and then on weekends I'm binge watching, spending time on my couch. Sometimes I order food, I rarely head out. When I was in college, I used to be out every day, meeting friends, making plans. Now I feel lifeless and trapped, I don't know what needs to change." Another 53-year-old client says, 'I recently joined a dance class, and I can't tell you how alive I feel. The shadow of the pandemic continued to haunt my life. My work is hybrid so I'm at my office twice a week and rest of the days I'm working from my home. I have forgotten what it's like to be in spaces that are neither home nor work. I listen to podcasts, chat with friends online, play on my console and yet feel isolated and unhappy although there isn't any reason particularly to be sad." Also read: Navigating grief after a personal loss Over the last decade, and more so in the last two years, my clients have been talking about this feeling of disengagement and disconnection. The thread that connects all of them is that they spend all their time either at home or at their workplace. And this seems true across age groups. Complicating it is the fact that even at home, people are spending more and more time alone, glued to their devices or eating alone. My 25-year-old client said that while they order food from the same restaurant, her father, mother and she watch separate shows in their own spaces. As I hear clients talk about this, I wonder if our loneliness, lack of aliveness, disengagement and lethargy is linked to the loss of 'third places", a term that is attributed to sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place. Our first place is the place we live and the second place is our workplace/school/college. Using this lens, our third places are spaces beyond these two, which could be the neighbourhood salon, gym, a place of worship, park, bookstore, grocery store, restaurant or community centre. In the book, Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the 'Great Good Places' at the Heart of Our Communities (2001), Oldenberg writes, 'The nature of a third place is one in which the presence of a 'regular' is always welcome, although never required. Membership is a simple, fluid process of frequent social contact, renewed each time by choice of the people involved." These are places that offer us familiarity, community, warmth, connection and micro interactions. They allow us a sense of ease, help us relax and offer engagement, either in short bursts or long duration which we can choose. In my neighbourhood, the dosa place is one of my favourite third places as is the bookstore I visit regularly. Both offer enough opportunities for interaction along with a sense of belonging and comfort, and in a strange way it feels like I can park all my worries, life's agonies at the doorstep and step in to a different world. I often suggest that clients think about these spaces from a lens of what rejuvenates and energises them. Then look at them from a perspective of shared interests. One client mentioned how she found a third space in the company of friends with whom she started discussing meditation at the park, and another joined a food lovers' community to find connection, friendship and joy. The road to building long-term engagement, community and a sense of vitality lies in these third places. While online delivery and technology is bringing a massive sense of convenience, it is taking away our social fitness and eating into our third spaces. Also read: Why strong social connections matter more than ever Finally, we need to choose and make room for these spaces, even on days when ordering in and lying on the couch feels tempting. Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist. She is the author of the book You Will be Alright: A Guide to Navigating Grief and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.
Eater
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
There Is No True Third Place
'I got completely and totally enamored with this new concept I saw in London,' writes Madeline Marcella in a Substack post titled 'My guide to: The rise of 'third spaces' in NYC...(no, members clubs don't count).' The concept is a wine bar that serves ice cream, an experience she says London offers and New York doesn't, a 'low-commitment space' where you can hang out with a friend without getting a full meal, where you don't 'wear pajamas' but don't have to get fully dressed up and can socialize without spending a fortune. Ignore the fact that you can order a drink with your ice cream at plenty of spots in New York. Marcella's post joins dozens of other recent articles, Reddit posts, and TikToks calling for the expansion of 'third spaces' (alternately called third places) in America — places that aren't work or home in which to spend leisure time. In 2024, Allie Volpe argued in Vox that third places were the antidote to the loneliness epidemic. That same year, Devika Rao in The Week lamented that third places are dying out. In the New York Times , Ephrat Livni chronicles how often 'third place' has come up in academic research over the past year, noting that COVID lockdown led to the closure of many businesses that counted as third places, and that virtual spaces cannot replace the experience of physical gathering. Most recently, Starbucks announced its intention to become a third place again. It's asking baristas to handwrite names on orders and is encouraging people to bring their own reusable mugs, policies Starbucks believes will make stores more welcoming for customers. Each new insistence on the importance of third places ends up muddying the definition of what a third place is. For some, it's a bar or restaurant where they can hang out with friends and community. For others, it's a park or somewhere else where socialization can happen for free. Third places are malls, or maybe they explicitly are not malls. In London, Third Space is the name of a luxury health club. A number of people think third places somehow only exist in Europe. Many other people have called for the development of more alcohol-free third places. For its part, Starbucks' adoption of the third space again comes with no longer giving out free water or allowing nonpaying customers to use the restroom, policies that would actually make it a space for everyone. The definition of a third place has always been broad. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term in 1989 in his book The Great Good Place . At its core, a third place is anywhere outside of the home or work where people can socialize in public, and where the nebulous concept of community is formed. They are places that don't require an appointment, are convenient and informal, and inexpensive enough to allow for one to potentially be a regular. Many of them tend to sell food and drink. 'In cities blessed with their own characteristic form of these Great Good Places,' such as in the cafes of Paris or the beer gardens of Germany, writes Oldenburg, 'the stranger feels at home — nay, is at home — whereas in cities without them, even the native does not feel at home.' Even in 1989, Oldenberg wrote about the decline in neighborhood taverns and soda fountains as synonymous with the decline in third places. But the recent fervor over the loss of third places seems to have created a new problem, where now there is No True Third Place. Every example that's offered is somehow not right, not enough, not built to facilitate the specific kind of experience that person is looking for, even though specific experiences aren't really what third spaces are about. So what do people want out of third-place socialization? According to Kelly Verel, the co-executive director for the organization Project for Public Spaces, 'there's a difference between defining just what [third places] are and then actually evaluating how well they're working as such.' Verel has focused much of her career on building and sustaining public food markets as places where people can gather and socialize, and not necessarily be pressured into spending money. But even when there is a commercial aspect to a third place, she says there are a few criteria to figure out if it's doing what it should. 'Is it accessible? Do people feel safe? Is it clean?,' she says. And most importantly, 'Do you notice people running into people that they didn't come with, but that they know and they're having an offhand conversation with?' A key aspect of any third place isn't just socialization, but spontaneous socialization. Sam Bail, founder of the New York pop-up Third Place Bar, says that's why bars have been such great examples. 'A lot of coffee shops have two tops, maybe couches, but you don't have the bar seating,' which encourages people to make small talk with the bartender, or at least be in closer physical proximity to people they may not have arrived with. You're more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger, or at least share a story with the bartender, than if you were at a table alone. Many complaining about the lack of third places have latched onto the idea that a third place should be free, though that was never part of the original definition. For Verel, it's more about being 'free to be there, even if you're not going to be spending money,' such as at a greenmarket. This is another reason why bars and certain restaurants have been such successful third places. They are places you theoretically can linger. Theoretically. One problem is that spaces that should be third places aren't actually functioning as such. Grabbing a drink at a bar where it's totally acceptable to be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt is an option, I'd say, literally anywhere a bar exists. But if a cocktail is $20, that's not exactly accessible enough to visit at a regular cadence. If you don't consume alcohol and are uncomfortable in spaces that serve it, perhaps a third place could be tea at a local cafe. But unless that cafe is open until 2 a.m., or as Bail says, is designed to facilitate socialization, the experience may feel the same as having tea in your apartment. Marcella's Substack guide specifically lists bars where you can partake in other activities, like ticketed craft parties. But those violate Oldenburg's appointment rule, and also, isn't the point just to hang? Allowing people to 'hang' is where restaurants and bars run up against the realities of operating in a rampantly capitalist society, as anyone who's been shooed out of their reservation after 90 minutes can attest. Nursing one $8 drink for a whole night while you mingle and fraternize doesn't help a business keep the lights on. There are thin margins to running a restaurant or bar, and even though Starbucks is banking its new business model entirely on the idea that you should treat it as a third place, it feels like you literally have to be an international corporation to make this kind of third place model work. Bail began her pop-up to build the community and capital to one day open a nonalcoholic brick-and-mortar bar. But so far, the rent prices in New York have kept Third Place Bar from becoming a real third place. 'I do have regulars, but it isn't a third place in the sense that it's just there, and you can just go,' she says. Another obstacle is that even if every corner had a place to meet an interesting neighbor, that neighbor would still usually be a stranger, which increasingly makes many people nervous. Our ability to socialize was severely impacted by the COVID pandemic. 'Research on prisoners, astronauts and hermits has shown that isolation atrophies our social skills,' wrote Shaunice Ajiwe in Philadelphia Magazine . 'Now we, too, seem to have lost our grasp on basic interpersonal norms,' and sometimes even the wish to socialize in the first place. When I read articles and lists lamenting the lack of third places, I see a desire to have control over every public interaction. That means places where you know what you are going to be eating, or taking a class where you can be so focused on the task at hand you don't socialize at all. Those kinds of interactions are safe, and I can't really blame anyone for seeking safety right now. For many the risk of a spontaneous interaction is too big to take. Better go to a museum with your closest friends, or invite them to your house, where you can control the environment and not risk the awkwardness, or worse, of speaking to someone you don't already know and trust. This isn't just a problem of the pandemic. As Oldenburg writes in the preface to the second edition of The Great Good Place in 1996, 'strangers frighten us more than ever,' despite unexpected social interaction being the point of a third place. That is indeed how trusting, safe communities are built. In these informal settings, we learn to see each other not as consumers or hobbyists or people with particular interests, but just people. We don't actually want to be alone or unbothered. If we did, we'd just be doing crafts at home, instead of looking for Reddit threads about knitting circles at local bars. But 'I do think there is this tendency now to be uncomfortable with not having something to do,' says Verel. Hence the urge to whip out your phone instead of just being present in a place. You shouldn't have to want to make a new best friend every time you want to eat dinner, but again, this is what has made restaurants and bars such natural third places. You have an activity, but it's still communal. You can ask someone if they'd suggest the beer they're drinking, or ask the bartender how she's doing while she's mixing your cocktail, or you can read a book and make it clear you just want to be alone in public. Maybe as we fight to make sure third places can actually open and operate, we also need to remind ourselves how to be in them. And also that not every bar requires a cute outfit. The freshest news from the food world every day
The Hindu
25-04-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
How new India is making friends
On weekdays, Shahnil Samantara and Manraj Singh work as a product manager and software engineer, respectively. But on Sundays, they compete in marathons with members of the running club they co-founded last year. Running has been a long-time hobby for both but it was only last June that Samantara, 26, and Singh, 27, decided to build a community in New Delhi around their shared passion. 'I'd make plenty of WhatsApp groups with different friend circles seeking fellow runners, but nobody would come except Manraj. So we started the Delhi Run Collective with the aim of getting people of all ages together, and gaining the motivation and company to go running as well,' says Samantara, who catches up with us on a sweltering Sunday morning. It is 7 a.m. and he is warming up for his weekly ritual with the Collective in South Delhi's Sanjay Van park. About 35 people, from software engineers to Army personnel to journalists and more, have turned up. Some have mutual friends, others are complete strangers to one another. At least four of the people I spoke to were first-timers, while two were professional marathon runners. The Delhi Run Collective (DRC) is one among at least 15 formal running clubs that have come up across Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru alone after the COVID-19 pandemic. And it's not just running clubs. There's an overall uptick in activities designed to forge community, and foster a larger culture of wellness amongst a generation usually associated with labels such as 'brainrot' and 'doomscrolling'. As per a 2021 global survey by market research and consulting firm Ipsos, four out of 10 urban Indians reported feeling lonely and friendless at most times, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Urban isolation is notable in metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, where about 18% respondents reported feeling isolated 'always', and 37% 'often'. The issue came into the spotlight in 2023, when the World Health Organization declared loneliness a pressing global health threat. Its health impact has been likened to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, or a feeling of hunger or thirst 'the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing'. What does this have to do with the rise of third places? In his 1989 book The Great Good Place, sociologist Ray Oldenburg first introduces the concept of a 'third place' or third space as an informal gathering place that serves as 'anchors of community life'. The disappearance of 'addas' (loitering spots near chai stalls), public parks, and other community spaces that once served as outlets to meet people and exchange conversation and ideas, is increasingly evident at a time when interactions and exchange of ideas are mediated online rather than in-person. That is where initiatives like running clubs and pickleball groups are stepping in to offer a solution to the loneliness epidemic. Mumbai-based Aayushi Pathak agrees. The 20-year-old student of Commerce recently started 'Hobby Hoarders' as one such community for young girls and women — strangers to each other — to meet up and engage in activities such as 'junk journaling' together, making postcards and bookmarks, crocheting and more. 'People really craved a girls-only community. Where they can share ideas and engage in hobbies without the pressure of perfectionism,' she says. The meet-ups take place at a pre-booked venue, anywhere between Andheri and Bandra, with the participants paying a fee to cover the costs, says Pathak. She hopes to expand the community and organise gatherings in other cities soon, since the group also has members from Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Initiatives such as the Open Collective and No Agenda Space in Bengaluru by Indiranagar resident Meghna Chaudhury have also caught on to this idea, with attempts to envision a space for strangers to meet up, work or simply do nothing. Safety and community 'We had a huge social circle but realised we didn't know anybody in our neighbourhood when we moved to our new home in Panchsheel Park. I'd keep wondering, if the house catches on fire tomorrow, who would we call? Pickleball is what changed that,' says 37-year-old Delhi resident Ekta Marwaha, who works as a business development head at a hydroponics farm. To Marwaha, the game — which combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping pong, and is seeing a surge of popularity thanks to social media — hasn't just opened up new networking opportunities at work, but also connected her to her neighbours. 'Our resident WhatsApp groups have over 1,000 women, of which 15 ended up joining an alternative WhatsApp group last year. We started with playing badminton before switching to pickleball.' The women now frequent each other's homes, and many have also visited the farm Marwaha works at, to buy plants. She now wishes to open a pickleball court of her own. And it's not just about networking. Safety is a huge concern for many women when they go out in public, and joining activity-based groups often gives them the courage to do that. 'A lot of women who are very interested in running have come to me saying that the lack of safety was the only thing holding them back,' says 40-year-old Swetha Subbiah, co-founder of Sisters in Sweat, a sports and wellness-based community. What started off as a WhatsApp group with a few women in 2018 is today a thriving community of 10,000 women across four cities — Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Sisters in Sweat offers a range of sporting activities, from football to paddle to swimming. But for most women, in their 20s and 30s, who join the group, the primary motivation is the search for a community, says Subbiah. 'Today, we see a lot of people leaving their hometowns for a job. A simpler way to meet a group of people with common interests is through such communities. In a team activity, when you engage with others, the bonding experience can be very therapeutic,' she adds. Booking a pickleball court in Delhi, for instance, costs anywhere between ₹800 and ₹1,200 (or more) for an hourly session. For many working professionals, it's also a chance at networking informally and building connections. Tier-2 India is catching up For Bhopal-based lawyer Arshad Hussain, playing pickleball twice or thrice a week has not only helped him make new friendships, but also created a sense of community. 'I felt lonely when I returned home after studying law in Odisha. I had lost touch with my old acquaintances or I didn't want to stay connected, in some cases. The absence of a community affected me greatly, but that has now changed,' he says. Kochi-based Sachin Kuruttukulam observes how the trend of 'out-migration' further isolates many youngsters. He says, 'Once you graduate from college, your entire friends circle might just move to different cities. There is a lot of migration happening out of Kerala to cities such as Bengaluru or even abroad.' Drawing inspiration from 'Run for a cause'-style events organised by local parks across the U.S. and Europe, he decided to team up with three of his friends to start the Kochi Run Club last August. A group of 15-odd individuals, most of them in their 20s, meets up every Saturday evening in Panampilly Nagar, Central Kochi, to begin their trail. After the run, the group stays back to have coffee or dinner. 'There is this general trend towards community-driven groups even in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,' acknowledges the 28-year-old strategy manager. Creating meaningful relationships Studies indicate that 'face-to-face' interactions have been falling for quite some time now. Analysis of time-use data from the United States, Britain, and Australia between 1995 and 2021 shows a steady, uniform decline in face-to-face communication, beginning well before the widespread adoption of social media. Manoj Sharma, who heads the SHUT Clinic at NIMHANS, Bengaluru, agrees that online communication has increased. 'Online platforms allow communication without inhibitions — whatever one says is met with some form of validation or acknowledgement. AI-based validation is also an emerging issue,' he says. 'Due to loneliness, people might turn to chatbots to discuss or present how they are feeling and simulate validation. If this becomes repetitive or predominant, people start losing out on offline opportunities to connect.' Dr. Sharma acknowledges that today's youth is highly self-aware. 'Young adults recognise this 'digital burnout' which happens as a result of professional or recreational use of the web. They are conscious and want to work on it,' he says. He sees the potential of group-based sports or activity classes in promoting 'digital fasting' or 'screen-free periods'. It goes beyond that, however, to provide feelings of 'acknowledgement and affiliation' and the joy of working towards 'cohesive goals' as a group — all of which lead to a 'dopamine high', something that is often sought out by users online. Activity-based communities are 'definitely more than just a moment in time', says Subbaiah of Sisters in Sweat. 'While awareness of health and wellness was sparked because of the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways, it's a shift that is going to be sustained.' Bhopal lawyer Hussain's trajectory, for instance, reflects this larger movement towards new forms of community, and friendships. 'I started going out for dinners or coffees with the people I played pickleball with. It's really wholesome, because these people have also turned into cheerleaders and a support system for me. An absence of community here had once made me question my self-worth and identity. But, these new friendships have turned out to be enriching and fulfilling,' he says. Gurmat is an independent journalist and researcher based in New Delhi. Gupta is an independent writer and social impact professional from Mumbai.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
At Starbucks, the chairs are coming back. Can it become a 'third place' again?
Starbucks has meant many things to many people: A convenient caffeine pit stop on the way to work, a place to gather with friends, a cozy nook for writers and creatives. But in recent years, the stores have seemed rather void — of meaning, perhaps, but definitely of furniture. And customers took note. In January, one TikTok user posted that her local Starbucks in San Francisco had been renovated and had half as much seating as it used to. 'Another third place gone to the wind of maximizing the ability to get out as many mobile pick-up orders as possible,' the user wrote. They're not wrong. It's all part of Starbucks's evolution from lone coffee bean seller to beloved cafe to global convenience chain. Now the brand is trying to adapt after complaints from customers — and even its own founder — that it had abandoned its homey vibe. Here's how the coffee giant's look has changed over the years, and what it says about our shifting social landscape. The first-ever Starbucks wasn't a cafe at all. Its initial Seattle location, opened in 1971, sold whole coffee beans before moving to its storefront in the city's iconic Pike Place Market. Starbucks's identity as a cafe began with the return of its marketing director, Howard Schultz. He left the company to launch his own coffee shop, but returned with a new mythos for Starbucks — one allegedly inspired by a trip to Italy, where much of social and civic life centered around cafes. Long conversations took place over cortados and cappuccinos, making cafes 'third places,' or somewhere to socialize outside of life's main locations for connection: home and the workplace. In 1987, Schultz bought out Starbucks, merged it with his former Il Giornale cafe, and the coffee giant was born. Though the term 'third place' became synonymous with the coffee house — and, more specifically, Starbucks — Schultz didn't coin it. The third place was a central concept to sociologist Ray Oldenburg's 1989 book, The Great Good Place. 'Schultz claims to have had this epiphany when he went to Milan,' Bryant Simon, a professor of history at Temple University and author of the book Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks, tells Yahoo Life. 'Whatever Schultz really thought, he perceived something really smart: People were suburbanizing [and] there was a fear and mistrust of people, but people also missed connection.' Starbucks, Schultz decided, would be the locus for a sense of community that Americans were missing. 'He laid out the stores in a way that at least invited people to sit down and slow down,' says Simon. At least, it would look like such a place. Starbucks initially added chairs, stools and tables, covering the basics of furnishing a hang-out space. But Schultz wanted the stores to look welcoming and more upscale than, say, McDonald's. Starbucks stores were intended to 'look like spaces for anyone to go, but they weren't for just anyone: They were elevated places to go,' Simon says. Schultz's vision of Starbucks made it not just a place to buy a product, but an experience worth paying for, B. Joseph Pine II, a management adviser and author who coined the term 'experience economy,' tells Yahoo Life. That sense of doing something special makes us more willing to pay a higher price for something as simple as a cup of coffee, say both Pine and Simon. If you want to make a space look like a place where you could sit down, add some chairs. If you want to make it look like you could stay awhile, add comfortable chairs. That was more or less the approach that Starbucks took, beginning in 1996. According to the company, that's when it swapped out some of its hard seating options in favor of furnishings that felt more homey, as symbolized by the big, plush, purple velvet armchairs it placed in many of its stores. Simon remembers one in downtown Philadelphia, near where he lives, that featured the purple chair prominently displayed in its front window. 'It was a staged promise that you could stop there,' he says. But Simon also believes that "Starbucks was never actually interested in community.' He points out that during the same era when the purple chairs graced the stores, they also featured large round tables he considers 'designed deliberately to be hard to sit at.' Simon doesn't think that design choices like those tables were an attempt to keep people apart, though. Instead, he believes that Starbucks recognized that most Americans wanted the store to look like a place to meet new people, but, in reality, they mostly wanted to be 'alone at a table in public,' he says. Americans weren't happy being spread out and disconnected from one another in suburbia, 'but they didn't necessarily want to talk to strangers and be involved in the hard conversations with strangers that third spaces are really about,' Simon adds. The velvet chairs of the late '90s and early aughts were meant to look lived-in, and they got lived in. The plush fabric didn't hold up very well against the heavy traffic; by the early 2000s, Starbucks cafes and their furniture looked a bit tired, and customers had begun 'rejecting the sameness' of the global chain, says Simon. 'This is probably inevitable when you sell culture, because culture is ephemeral and it's hard to hold onto that forever.' And then 2008 happened. Amid the global economic recession, coffee sales plummeted as people looked to cut back on their spending. Starbucks was forced to close 600 of its stores and Schultz stepped in to refocus on customers. Starbucks polled its coffee drinkers and integrated their critiques into its strategy, but the real driver of its rebound was technology. Mobile apps allowed customers to order their favorite frappuccinos with ease and made Starbucks a stronger competitor against cheaper options like McDonald's. More than a decade later, mobile ordering helped Starbucks survive and thrive during the pandemic. Social-media-friendly drinks like purple lavender lattes, bright green matcha iced beverages and, of course, holiday favorites like the pumpkin spice latte earned Starbucks additional loyalty. Sugary, sometimes neon-colored refreshers made Starbucks a popular hangout for teenagers who continue to flock to the cafes, while adult customers have been less enthused. But the company also did things that made its cafes exceedingly popular places to go. (And go: Starbucks's single-stall, free-to-use bathrooms had been such a welcome amenity in the early 2000s that Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York City, said the metropolis didn't need public restrooms because 'there's enough Starbucks that'll let you use the bathroom.') Amid a rise in homelessness in the 2020s, many customers noticed that chairs were disappearing or being replaced by hard, uncomfortable seating. Pine and Simon believe this was intended to discourage people from hanging out in the cafes and using their bathrooms without buying anything, and Starbucks itself cited safety concerns. In Simon's hometown of Philadelphia, the purple chair in the downtown Starbucks window was replaced 'by a bunch of boxes,' he says. And this year, the company announced the end of its open-door bathroom policy, instead requiring that people make a purchase in order to receive bathroom access or water. Some customers have been puzzled and disappointed by the changes. Even its founder and former CEO, Schultz, was unhappy, posting an open letter to Starbucks on LinkedIn and calling for it to return to form. In Pine's opinion, Starbucks had sacrificed its most valuable asset: experience. He even penned an op-ed in the Harvard Business Review, titled 'How Starbucks devalued its own brand.' He blames not only the lack of seating, but the abandonment of personal touches, such as ditching handwritten names on cups in favor of printed labels. During the pandemic and after, 'you could still buy all the Starbucks goods with mobile ordering and contactless delivery, but it was the experience of anyplace where you got together with people that we really missed,' Pine says. In January, within weeks of Pine's HBR article being published (and less than a month after the bathroom policy change), Starbucks announced an about-face: The chairs and condiment bars are coming back, and the brand is introducing ceramic mugs and glasses for free refills of some drinks. 'I'm happy to say the third place is alive and well. It's as needed as it ever was,' CEO Brian Niccol said at the Starbucks shareholder meeting in March. 'We're working hard to ensure our coffeehouses have the right vibe. We want to invite customers in, showcase our great coffee, provide a comfortable place to stay and make them feel like their visit was time well spent.' To create the right 'vibe,' Starbucks is revamping its cafe interiors. The company told Yahoo Life that it's testing its new look in a few locations. In lieu of photos of those cafes, Starbucks shared renderings it says are indicative of the future of its locations, which feature cushioned seating, wood-paneled service areas and a lounge-y feel. Pine says that the new look is 'very much in line' with what he hoped to see. But it's not just about the furniture. If Starbucks is to be the 'third place' it claims to be, its focus needs to be on how people connect within its stores, not simply where they sit. Pine is happy that the company is bringing back handwriting on some coffee cups because that 'makes things more personal. That's where the rubber meets the road," he says. "It's the interaction that people have in the place, not just with their friends or strangers, but with the baristas, that can make or break that visit.'
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
At Starbucks, the chairs are coming back. Can it become a 'third place' again?
Starbucks has meant many things to many people: A convenient caffeine pit stop on the way to work, a place to gather with friends, a cozy nook for writers and creatives. But in recent years, the stores have seemed rather void — of meaning, perhaps, but definitely of furniture. And customers took note. In January, one TikTok user posted that her local Starbucks in San Francisco had been renovated and had half as much seating as it used to. 'Another third place gone to the wind of maximizing the ability to get out as many mobile pick-up orders as possible,' the user wrote. They're not wrong. It's all part of Starbucks's evolution from lone coffee bean seller to beloved cafe to global convenience chain. Now the brand is trying to adapt after complaints from customers — and even its own founder — that it had abandoned its homey vibe. Here's how the coffee giant's look has changed over the years, and what it says about our shifting social landscape. The first-ever Starbucks wasn't a cafe at all. Its initial Seattle location, opened in 1971, sold whole coffee beans before moving to its storefront in the city's iconic Pike Place Market. Starbucks's identity as a cafe began with the return of its marketing director, Howard Schultz. He left the company to launch his own coffee shop, but returned with a new mythos for Starbucks — one allegedly inspired by a trip to Italy, where much of social and civic life centered around cafes. Long conversations took place over cortados and cappuccinos, making cafes 'third places,' or somewhere to socialize outside of life's main locations for connection: home and the workplace. In 1987, Schultz bought out Starbucks, merged it with his former Il Giornale cafe, and the coffee giant was born. Though the term 'third place' became synonymous with the coffee house — and, more specifically, Starbucks — Schultz didn't coin it. The third place was a central concept to sociologist Ray Oldenburg's 1989 book, The Great Good Place. 'Schultz claims to have had this epiphany when he went to Milan,' Bryant Simon, a professor of history at Temple University and author of the book Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks, tells Yahoo Life. 'Whatever Schultz really thought, he perceived something really smart: People were suburbanizing [and] there was a fear and mistrust of people, but people also missed connection.' Starbucks, Schultz decided, would be the locus for a sense of community that Americans were missing. 'He laid out the stores in a way that at least invited people to sit down and slow down,' says Simon. At least, it would look like such a place. Starbucks initially added chairs, stools and tables, covering the basics of furnishing a hang-out space. But Schultz wanted the stores to look welcoming and more upscale than, say, McDonald's. Starbucks stores were intended to 'look like spaces for anyone to go, but they weren't for just anyone: They were elevated places to go,' Simon says. Schultz's vision of Starbucks made it not just a place to buy a product, but an experience worth paying for, B. Joseph Pine II, a management adviser and author who coined the term 'experience economy,' tells Yahoo Life. That sense of doing something special makes us more willing to pay a higher price for something as simple as a cup of coffee, say both Pine and Simon. If you want to make a space look like a place where you could sit down, add some chairs. If you want to make it look like you could stay awhile, add comfortable chairs. That was more or less the approach that Starbucks took, beginning in 1996. According to the company, that's when it swapped out some of its hard seating options in favor of furnishings that felt more homey, as symbolized by the big, plush, purple velvet armchairs it placed in many of its stores. Simon remembers one in downtown Philadelphia, near where he lives, that featured the purple chair prominently displayed in its front window. 'It was a staged promise that you could stop there,' he says. But Simon also believes that "Starbucks was never actually interested in community.' He points out that during the same era when the purple chairs graced the stores, they also featured large round tables he considers 'designed deliberately to be hard to sit at.' Simon doesn't think that design choices like those tables were an attempt to keep people apart, though. Instead, he believes that Starbucks recognized that most Americans wanted the store to look like a place to meet new people, but, in reality, they mostly wanted to be 'alone at a table in public,' he says. Americans weren't happy being spread out and disconnected from one another in suburbia, 'but they didn't necessarily want to talk to strangers and be involved in the hard conversations with strangers that third spaces are really about,' Simon adds. The velvet chairs of the late '90s and early aughts were meant to look lived-in, and they got lived in. The plush fabric didn't hold up very well against the heavy traffic; by the early 2000s, Starbucks cafes and their furniture looked a bit tired, and customers had begun 'rejecting the sameness' of the global chain, says Simon. 'This is probably inevitable when you sell culture, because culture is ephemeral and it's hard to hold onto that forever.' And then 2008 happened. Amid the global economic recession, coffee sales plummeted as people looked to cut back on their spending. Starbucks was forced to close 600 of its stores and Schultz stepped in to refocus on customers. Starbucks polled its coffee drinkers and integrated their critiques into its strategy, but the real driver of its rebound was technology. Mobile apps allowed customers to order their favorite frappuccinos with ease and made Starbucks a stronger competitor against cheaper options like McDonald's. More than a decade later, mobile ordering helped Starbucks survive and thrive during the pandemic. Social-media-friendly drinks like purple lavender lattes, bright green matcha iced beverages and, of course, holiday favorites like the pumpkin spice latte earned Starbucks additional loyalty. Sugary, sometimes neon-colored refreshers made Starbucks a popular hangout for teenagers who continue to flock to the cafes, while adult customers have been less enthused. But the company also did things that made its cafes exceedingly popular places to go. (And go: Starbucks's single-stall, free-to-use bathrooms had been such a welcome amenity in the early 2000s that Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York City, said the metropolis didn't need public restrooms because 'there's enough Starbucks that'll let you use the bathroom.') Amid a rise in homelessness in the 2020s, many customers noticed that chairs were disappearing or being replaced by hard, uncomfortable seating. Pine and Simon believe this was intended to discourage people from hanging out in the cafes and using their bathrooms without buying anything, and Starbucks itself cited safety concerns. In Simon's hometown of Philadelphia, the purple chair in the downtown Starbucks window was replaced 'by a bunch of boxes,' he says. And this year, the company announced the end of its open-door bathroom policy, instead requiring that people make a purchase in order to receive bathroom access or water. Some customers have been puzzled and disappointed by the changes. Even its founder and former CEO, Schultz, was unhappy, posting an open letter to Starbucks on LinkedIn and calling for it to return to form. In Pine's opinion, Starbucks had sacrificed its most valuable asset: experience. He even penned an op-ed in the Harvard Business Review, titled 'How Starbucks devalued its own brand.' He blames not only the lack of seating, but the abandonment of personal touches, such as ditching handwritten names on cups in favor of printed labels. During the pandemic and after, 'you could still buy all the Starbucks goods with mobile ordering and contactless delivery, but it was the experience of anyplace where you got together with people that we really missed,' Pine says. In January, within weeks of Pine's HBR article being published (and less than a month after the bathroom policy change), Starbucks announced an about-face: The chairs and condiment bars are coming back, and the brand is introducing ceramic mugs and glasses for free refills of some drinks. 'I'm happy to say the third place is alive and well. It's as needed as it ever was,' CEO Brian Niccol said at the Starbucks shareholder meeting in March. 'We're working hard to ensure our coffeehouses have the right vibe. We want to invite customers in, showcase our great coffee, provide a comfortable place to stay and make them feel like their visit was time well spent.' To create the right 'vibe,' Starbucks is revamping its cafe interiors. The company told Yahoo Life that it's testing its new look in a few locations. In lieu of photos of those cafes, Starbucks shared renderings it says are indicative of the future of its locations, which feature cushioned seating, wood-paneled service areas and a lounge-y feel. Pine says that the new look is 'very much in line' with what he hoped to see. But it's not just about the furniture. If Starbucks is to be the 'third place' it claims to be, its focus needs to be on how people connect within its stores, not simply where they sit. Pine is happy that the company is bringing back handwriting on some coffee cups because that 'makes things more personal. That's where the rubber meets the road," he says. "It's the interaction that people have in the place, not just with their friends or strangers, but with the baristas, that can make or break that visit.'
