Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks [Hardcover]

Bryant Simon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009

Everything but the Coffee casts a fresh eye on the world's most famous coffee company, looking beyond baristas, movie cameos, and Paul McCartney CDs to understand what Starbucks can tell us about America. Bryant Simon visited hundreds of Starbucks around the world to ask, Why did Starbucks take hold so quickly with consumers? What did it seem to provide over and above a decent cup of coffee? Why at the moment of Starbucks' profit-generating peak did the company lose its way, leaving observers baffled about how it might regain its customers and its cultural significance? Everything but the Coffee probes the company's psychological, emotional, political, and sociological power to discover how Starbucks' explosive success and rapid deflation exemplify American culture at this historical moment. Most importantly, it shows that Starbucks speaks to a deeply felt American need for predictability and class standing, community and authenticity, revealing that Starbucks' appeal lies not in the product it sells but in the easily consumed identity it offers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After five years of on-site investigation, including Starbucks locations across the country and around the world, author and history professor Simon (Boardwalk Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America) has produced a less-than-earth-shaking examination of the coffee chain's influence on America (and its American influence abroad). Simon's hodgepodge of observations are heavy on the obvious ("Lots of people, I learned from my many hours of observation, used Starbucks as a second place, as a work space and meeting room"), and light on revealing details or investigation ("After making its five-cent donation to the world's water-deprived" per bottle of their Ethos water, "the company still gets an extra twenty to fifty cents... of profit"). Those who frequent Starbucks will enjoy Simon's range of topics, from business matters to the music played to the (very American) concept of "self-gifting." Though Simon's knowledge of the brand is obvious, his insight is sparse and his in-person observations lack color (though Starbucks deserves some of the blame for that).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Those who frequent Starbucks will enjoy Simon's range of topics, from business matters to the music played to the (very American) concept of 'self-gifting.'"--Publishers Weekly

"Simon's book is a fascinating, sometimes dispiriting look at how Starbucks is emblematic of some deeper socioeconomic phenomena at work in this country over the past decade and a half."--Boston Phoenix

"A thoughtful, in-depth study."--World Wide Work

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520261062
• ISBN-13: 978-0520261068
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #79 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Coffee & Tea

More About the Author

Bryant Simon is professor of history and the Director of American Studies at Temple University. He is the author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America. His most recent book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks, looks at what our latte choices tell us about our daily desires and dreams. This research took him to more than 450 Starbucks in 10 countries.

He blogs at www.everythingbutthecoffee.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks a Latte, Starbucks!, December 4, 2009

By 

M. P. Procter Sr. "History in 2011" (Anthem, AZ, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Corporate powers, posing as public service providers, have taken advantage of the privatization of life, January 20, 2010

By 

ROROTOKO (rorotoko dot com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks (Hardcover)

"Everything but the Coffee" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Simon's book interview ran here as the cover feature on January 18, 2010.

0 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing deal, November 29, 2010

By 

angthu - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks (Hardcover)

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