Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks

Bryant Simon, the author of "Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America," has written another compelling book about a once beloved, now declining, American institution in "Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks." From its inception in the early 1970s to today, Simon traces the rise and fall of Starbucks, not only as a company and business venture, but also as a piece of Americana.

Simon, a Professor of History at Temple University, defines what he calls "the Starbucks moment," where in a short period of time, Starbucks exploded and was literally everywhere. However, as he points out, as quickly as Starbucks arrived and became the talk of the business community and Wall Street, the company began to fade and lose its luster. He describes how Starbucks sought people of status and wealth to tout its name and logo and then how it used those high end customers to draw in the middle class. It was the middle class customers buying high priced coffees and lattes that allowed Starbucks its meteoric rise and swollen stock price.

Starbucks, says Simon, convinced a whole group of people that they could abdicate their responsibilities for environmentalism, human rights, poor peasant farmers, and an array of other causes to a large corporation simply by paying more for its products. Yet despite the company's advertising - or is it propaganda? - Simon shows that very little of what Starbucks claims is reality. One example he sites is the environmental issue of recycling. Clearly, using ceramic cups that can be washed is more environmentally sound than using paper cups that go into a landfill. Simon opines that rather than providing reusable cups for its customers, Starbucks continues to use paper cups (the inside is coated with a polyethylene plastic) so that its logo can continue to be seen. After all, if a customer has a paper cup, he or she is more inclined to leave the coffee shop with cup in hand to become a walking advertisement. In an amusing story, he recalls going into a Starbucks and asking for a mug because he was going to drink his coffee on site. Bedlam ensued as the staff searched for a ceramic mug. Just as he was about to give up and settle for a paper cup, an employee shouted "I found it!" "It" was the only ceramic, or reusable, cup in the place.

In other chapters, Simon talks about Starbucks role as a "Third Place," which is a term used to describe somewhere outside the home or workplace where people meet. Starbucks' ventures into music and books and its impact on globalization and fair-trade coffee are some other topics covered.

As the author states in the Afterword, "Everything but the Coffee" was not intended to be a hatchet job on Starbucks. "I defended Starbucks against what I saw then...as knee-jerk attacks against bigness...." However, after getting into his research, "...I stopped seeing the company as an engine of community. Instead, I saw it as a mythmaker offering only an illusion of belonging...." What the reader will find is a well-written, well-researched work that will be an eye opening experience for those who have loved or hated Starbucks. Eric Schlosser's "Fast food Nation" opened the first decade of the 21st Century with an expose of McDonalds and the fast food industry. Bryant Simon ends the decade with a dissection of Starbucks and the abdication of consumer responsibility.
Get more detail about Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks.