If we continue to assign blame where it is convenient, we can never truly grow to become better at business (or as people). I might just develop a whole new website dedicated to the failed coffee shop owners that blame Starbucks for causing their demise. Get over it! If your coffee is not good enough to drink or your business is not profitable enough to survive, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
Such is the gist of my comments to a recent article on a New York Real Estate blog, here:
Starbucks seems to have left another local coffee house in its wake. Earlier this week, The Bean Coffee and Tea, located at 118 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, closed its doors after being in operation just four months.
While it seems the demise of the caffeine outpost, which also has a location in the East Village, could easily be attributed to the Starbucks that sits just feet away, Bean manager Guy Pujlia blamed the size of the store.
“The space was just too small,” Mr. Pujlia told The Real Estate. “People would get tired of waiting in line and just go down the street to Starbucks.”
Rumors have been floating around the neighborhood recently that Ini Ani, another local coffee shop, might also be falling the way of The Bean Coffee and Tea. However, an employee at the Stanton Street store, notable for the corrugated cardboard that covers its walls, confirmed that this was indeed a rumor. Long live the independent coffee house! For now.
- Mark Wellborn
And my response (we’ll wait to see if it’s approved by the site’s owner):
I hate to break it to you, Starbucks does not put independent coffee shops out of business; bad coffee or bad business practices do.
As a retail consultant that works world-wide with both independent and large chain coffee businesses, I find that sales INCREASE on average 20% for a small, well planned and run coffee shop that is put in direct competition with a Starbucks (including those shops we have worked with in New York).
You should assign blame where it’s due: poor planning, management and execution. It was probably a matter of time until the shop in question failed; competition just accelerated the inevitable and gave the failed owners a convenient scapegoat for their own missteps.
We, as Americans love to root for the underdog, but never forget that we ultimately vote with our wallets for what a retail establishment does for us. Your retail business must perform or it will perish.
“Independent” coffee shops have chains at a disadvantage where it comes to potential quality and local appeal. There is no reason (short of adequate capitalization; in which case, don’t even attempt it) that a savvy independent business owner cannot dance profitable circles around large-scale chains. Poor planning and mismanagement are ALWAYS to blame when a small restaurant or coffee shop fails, not the dirty under-handed tricks of “big coffee.”
To all of the would-be local newspaper authors and food bloggers out there currently outlining their next “local coffee shop killed by mermaid” article while they sip on a cup of coffee from Starbucks, consider all of the reasons that you hadn’t been back in years. The coffee was awful, the location was inconvenient, the employees were unattentive and it looked like the owners spent every last dime they had on the build-out (which was about half as much as they needed). You didn’t think that they could survive then, and you were right.
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