Cultural Ethnography Of Starbucks

A coffee shop is a perfect place to study social construction in our society. For one, a plethora of different people go in and out of such shops. And they do so for a variety of reasons. Because of this, coffee shops truly encapsulate America. Our group aimed to capture the workings of society using the four classic anthropological methods. Sikander Chohan, who authored the biological anthropology section, focused on how physical factors of human beings affected the Tim Hortons he studied. Our linguist specialist, Chris Josebalan, focused on how nonverbal communication, vocal vocabulary, and gender speech contrasts were factors in the everyday workings of the Coffee Beanery Café he studied. Our two cultural specialists, Noah Smith and Ashley Hamblin, studied people's reasonings, gender construction, and the effect of groups. Owen Ekblad, our archaeology specialist, studied at two locations of the local coffee shop chain called Sweetwaters. The two locations he visited, in Ann Arbor and Canton, were representative of a wider variety of human influence and behavior. All in all, our group aimed to make observations that would give us an insight into social construction in coffee shops.

My observations of human behavior were made at Starbucks on Grand avenue, New York near Elmhurst. I chose this location due to the high customer traffic that it sees. Since it is a popular coffee shop, the customer base cuts across different multicultural sector of the population. There is a lot of variety in the backgrounds and personalities of the people visiting the shop. This quality makes any patterns that are recognized more representative of the general public.

For my ethnography project, I decided to observe the Starbucks on Rockside Road in Independence, Ohio. My plan was to observe the subculture of Starbucks’ customers. A subculture is defined as a “structured social inequality or, more specifically, systematic inequalities between groups of people that arise as intended or unintended consequences of social processes and relationships.” My question was twofold. Does Starbucks appeal to certain social statuses? And if so, does Starbucks serve as another example of social inequality?

I set out to find a place to begin my observations, not knowing what to fully expect, what I may find. So I decided to look around at what is close to my home that isn’t a place I frequent or have even visited at all. Then it came to me, the Starbucks that is only about a mile away is a perfect place for me to observe subjects that I would consider different from myself, seeing as how I consider such obscene prices for coffee ridiculous. Starbucks is a very popular chain of coffee vendors that describe their product as more about quality than what Americans are used to in typical coffee joints.

I gathered my information from Dunkin’ Donuts shop on the Third Avenue. Dunkin’ Donuts is one of the largest coffee shop chains in the world. I chose this because it is close to our house. When I first walked into the shop, I heard Chainsmokers’ Closer song. It was also a quiet place sometimes where you could just sit and relax. It is a small place with limited seats. There were only three small tables and a long table. The place is air-conditioned, so it is cold. There is also free Wi-Fi, so the customers will not get bored while they are waiting in line or drinking their coffee. There is also a Baskin-Robbins inside the store, so it is not only a coffee shop but also an ice cream shop. I wanted to interview one of the staff, but they were busy. I ended up interviewing an old woman because she was sitting with me since there were limited seats. She is 71 years old and originally from Mexico. She was 23 years old when she moved here. She is married to a Mexican too and they had three children.

I have chosen Dunkin Donuts for my Ethnography of a Coffee House report. Opened in 1948 by William Rosenberg in Quincy, Massachusetts, Mr. Rosenberg named his restaurant “Open Kettle” which at that time served only donuts and coffee. Two years later in 1950, Mr. Rosenberg renamed his restaurant “Dunkin Donuts.” Mr. Rosenberg’s goal was “make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well-merchandised stores,” a philosophy which still holds true today (News Dunkin Donuts).

For my ethnography report, I chose to study Starbucks located inside the NJIT campus center in Newark, New Jersey. The purpose of this study was to identify the behaviors and possible needs of the people in the area that enter this establishment, and possibly all coffee shops located inside a school campus. I started my ethnography research at 1:45 Pm and ended at 3:45, it was slightly snowing which is a variable that I took into consideration. During the two hours that I spend at the coffee shop only 4 people walked in which I found unusual because people tent to grab a cup of coffee whenever the weather is unpleasant.

Starbucks was originally a small waterfront coffee shop located in Seattle that opened in 1971 (starbucks.com- Our Heritage). It is extremely convenient and now has over 24,000 stores in the 70 countries it is located in, which is one of the reasons that it is so well known today (starbucks.com- Starbucks Coffee International). There is a large variety of coffees you could get, however, they do not focus solely on coffee. They also sell teas, smoothies, pastries, and more. Their mission is to “inspire and nurture the human spirit- one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time,” (starbucks.com- Our Heritage). It is a place that people can work on computers, study, or hang out at, so it is constantly in business.

I chose the Starbucks Ethnography due to Starbucks’ ubiquity and personal relevance. Every age group knows about Starbucks, from young students in elementary school to retired seniors that are spending their days relaxing. At the place I work, a fourth grader brought a drink in. That someone so young is already drinking a Frappuccino speaks to how far Starbucks’ influence has pervaded society and strongly influenced my decision to write it. Symbolic anthropology, defined as, understanding “a culture by discovering and analyzing the symbols…” (Nanda, 35), is best applied to this ethnography especially due to the green logo that is present on everything that is Starbucks.

People in North American countries are privileged enough to be able to express their religions in public places such as a coffee shop. Some of them are ignorant enough to think that a coffee shop not putting Christmas decorations on a cup is war on Christianity.

As mentioned earlier, our research method of choice is naturalistic observations. Each group member will be going to different Starbucks locations in the lower mainland. By going to different locations, we are expecting to prevent all of us from getting the same results from the same repeat customers if there does end up being any. This may also show us if there are different patterns in different Starbucks locations.

Imaging if there was no more coffee in this world, how would you feel? Nowadays, coffee becomes an important part of people’s life. People who often work overtime, they drink coffee because caffeine can make you awake; people who have to wake up early in the morning, they drink coffee because instead of making breakfast, coffee is more convenient; people drink coffee during the free time, because it also tastes good.

Starbucks strategy at the beginning was based upon creating a symbolic-expressive value trough a social meaning concept of offering the American community meeting places; this positioned its original products and made associations to identify consumers with self-expression providing personal, social and sociocultural meaning.

Starbucks used many tactics to reduce its distance from foreign markets. Firstly, Starbucks conducted extensive research in each country. They used focus groups, and quantitative analysis, to evaluate local cultural sensitivities and preferences. But it also used specific local adaptations. For

1.1 Brief overview of the proposal: This report is focus on finding out the opinions of underground students in XJTLU to the proposal for the Starbucks in Wen Xing Plaza (see figure 1). The original site is located in the west of Wen Xing Plaza nearing A01 and A02 students dormitory area, hence that is convert for students’ daily life. The first floor of original site is FamilyMart and the second floor is ChunJian haircut salon. For surroundings, higher-education zone has numerous graduate students and underground students, hence a place to relax and communicate with friends are needed. As for changes, firstly, extensions made of rectangular red bricks were reprinted to green and white aim to reflect Starbucks style. The second part of the proposal was to convert ceramic floor into wooden floor. In addition, one of the highlights of the interior was tear original haircut equipment down and add modern furniture to create an austere style image.