Well, last Friday Starbucks opened their first Paris store. I'm not sure how I feel about this. The Paris cafe is an institution. A frequently smoky, frequently cliquish environ—it is still quintessentially Parisian. I don't think they have changed much since the days when Toulouse Lautrec haunted the cafes of Montmartre. (The bathrooms in many are still a joke).
That being said they have an ineffable charm and there is something quite reassuring about being able to walk into any cafe and order "un express" and confidently plonk down a euro knowing that this is about as close to a fixed price as you will find in cafes in France. Almost every cafe offers the same coffee drinks. Indeed, walking into a cafe in Paris one can imagine that Hemingway and Gertrude Stein drank coffee prepared the same way decades ago. None of this "double-decaf latte with soy milk and caramel" crap that I hear almost daily at my local Starbucks.
I really have mixed feelings about the news of this opening. I don't want American culture to invade France—I love it as it is. On the other hand, when Starbucks invaded Noe Valley in San Francisco a few years ago I had to admit they offered a better product. Their store was clean, well lit, comfortable and they poured a good cup.
The down side is of course that such an enterprise is very capable of predatory pricing (they have been accused of it in the past) and after they have put all the local coffee shops out of business they jack their prices to the point where one is paying $3-4US for a cup of flavored coffee. The American attitude is that competition improves the breed.
So what does this all mean to the French? I don't believe that their coffee will be "improved" by the addition of Starbucks. Presumably the store is non-smoking (a small revolution in itself) and just as revolutionary, it will have modern, clean bathrooms and great service. But Starbucks will not be able to undercut prices of other cafes significantly (French law most likely wouldn't permit this). So they'll have to compete by offering a better product (and will the French think its better) and presumably, reasonable prices.
But is France really ready to pay 3-5 Euros per cup of coffee? I seriously doubt that the current pricing structure will work in many areas of Paris—the economics of the average wage plus the sky-high rents in the best areas make it unlikely to my mind. The Avenue de l'Opera (where the first store opened) is home to a few nice stores and lots of boutique travel agencies but the proximity to the Place de l'Opera should mean pretty high rents. Of course, a firm with 7000-odd stores should be able to run a single store (or half a dozen in Paris) at a loss for years.
I look forward to visiting their storefront. I just hope that I can still buy that 1E espresso.
Posted by artandscience at January 20, 2004 03:23 PMwhy did they take so long to open up in France?
Posted by: Donato at January 21, 2004 12:32 PMProbably because they knew how difficult it was. Both with the high rents in the capital and dealing with French bureaucracy. They tried numerous times to partner with French firms but got turned down. So now they have partnered with (I think) a Spanish firm that ventured with them in other European countries.
I've decided I really don't want them to become as ubiquitous as they are here. They should FAIL. A large part of the charm of Paris' cafes is that they have survived relatively unchanged for the last hundred years (longer in some cases). Newer is not always better and I don't want the same damn Starbucks on every corner. I want variety. I want to be able to have a new (and possibly very positive) experience working into a previously untried cafe. I DON'T NEED the security of Starbucks. Starbucks, at least in France, is an EVIL idea.
Posted by: stefan fielding-isaacs at January 21, 2004 03:46 PM