Social Interaction Patterns

In our society, we can see many different kinds of social setting and one of the most common settings is coffee shop. Indeed, there is at least one coffee shop on each block. According to Coffee Association of Canada, the market size of coffee industry in Canada is more than 6.2 billion dollars. It shows that how big and important this social setting is. Among a lot of coffee shops, Starbucks, Tim Horton, and Second Cup are the biggest and the most popular franchisers in Canada. If the purpose of visiting coffee shop is only for coffee itself, they might have not been grown like these days.

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.

"Improving customers' lives by providing an opportunity to for people to socialize over premium drinks while relaxing in a casual café environment" (Blenz Coffee)

The setting for my first observation assignment was at the Starbucks, in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, near my family home. The day I choose to observe was Sunday, November 27th, 2016, between the time of ten o’clock and eleven o’clock am, after church hours. The second observation assignment location was Mugsies, a coffee shop, near Westminster College, in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, between the time of eleven o’clock and twelve o’clock pm during lunch hour, on Tuesday, November 29, 2016. Prior to my arrival, I developed a hypothesis about what I was expecting while observing the people and employees at two different locations and settings. My hypothesis

The “Coffee Wars – The Big Three: Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts” article focuses on the company analysis of the Starbucks brand and how its main competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, has affected their brand and driven competition higher. Even though there are many companies trying to enter the specialty coffee market, these three companies own the majority of the market share. With Starbucks’ top quality and above average prices they hold a different market than the fast coffee/food market of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks; yet the competitive moves Dunkin’ Donuts has made over the years in order to compete with Starbucks and surpass McDonald’s has driven competition up between all three companies. The competition has stiffened ever more in the past ten years due to the changing economy. This led to “the big three” to come up with different techniques to gain competitive advantage over the other. Although the competition between these companies is to gain most of the market share, consumers are still loyal to a certain brand; this makes it difficult to gain each other’s clientele. McDonald’s continues to appeal to customers who want value and speed, Dunkin’ Donuts focuses on the middle-class, while Starbucks a customer who desires a higher quality product along with being recognized for using the brand.

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.

Coffee brews under a drip of scalding water, beans grind in the gears of a metal mechanism set atop the bar, and the chatter of patrons syncs with the sound of steaming milk in each Starbucks cafe chain. Like most cafes, the aroma of Arabica overwhelms all others, natural light shines in through the windows to touch the wooden tables, and the murmurs of conversations can be heard throughout the edifice. However, whereas the plebeian palate that feigns good taste finds pleasure in drinking coffee in its most basic form so that the true flavors of the drink might be relished, the rising youth of our post-modern society realize that coffee is best prepared when the taste of the bean is overwhelmed by various artificial flavors and sugars—undoubtedly cancerous but utterly unimportant. These developing connoisseurs of high society, with all their charm and intelligence, make it clear that Starbucks is the only cafe from which anyone who is anyone must buy one’s coffee. Starbucks, truly a place for the cultural and coffee elite, consistently attracts three intriguingly eccentric and completely loyal customers of both sharp wit and fine intellect: the female Women’s Studies major, the flagrant homosexual male, and the out-of-place conservative.

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.

Starbucks with its inspired high selling coffee bean has been very popular in the American Culture over the years. I decided to observe Starbucks due to its popularity all over campus, although it has not been a fan of mine. I found it very pleasant and relaxing during my time there. I noticed more intimate interactions between workers when there were little or no customers and fewer interactions between workers when the place was crowded.

Patrons like myself stood in line scanning the café for empty tables and available seats. The arrangement of the tables in this area allowed for more seating flexibility and appeared to lower social boundaries between customers while encouraging interaction between members of cliques and individual patrons. Armed with my laptop and cappuccino, my observations occurred from an empty table in the center of the café.

I can always look forward to starting my day off, with a steaming cup of coffee, I love that even if it 's a cold, dark, and gloomy day outside, a big cup of coffee can get me through the day. I could go on and on about my appreciation and fondness over the drink itself, but I won’t. However, I would like to share with you a remarkable phenomenon that I’ve come to notice, it is other people sharing this experience, this love for coffee, and they do it all across the globe in shops known as “cafes,” or “coffee shops.” And this is exactly what Howard Schultz (The CEO

The demand for coffee shops is born from the increased number of individuals seeking coffee brewed outside of the home. This creates a larger market for coffee shops. An increased amount of people are starting their mornings off by purchasing breakfast and a cup of coffee away from home (Tuttle 2014), more people are enjoying gourmet coffee (NCA National Coffee Drinking Trends 2015 Infographic), and younger generations are demanding more coffee and coffee drinks from coffee shops (Tuttle 2014, S&D Coffee and Tea inc. 2014, Statista 2015). Coffee shops must compete with at home coffee, work place coffee, and teas for the caffeinated beverage markets (LN 2015). Demand for coffee within different markets varies, and provides competition for coffee shops. Single cup coffee makers, increasingly qualitative instant coffees, and gourmet beans are all sources of competition that could satisfy the demand for coffee. However, coffee shops are becoming more ingrained in social

This case assignment discusses the history of Starbuck’s accomplishments as they entered the American coffee culture heritage. In 1983, The chairman and CEO Howard Schultz traveled to Italy and had a dream to carry the Italy coffeehouse ritual back to the United States. Schultz was focused on creating an environment meeting company that makes good coffee but also be a social experiment. Starbucks today opened more than 19,000 stores functioning in 62 countries. Starbucks has numerous rewards that globalization has offered and they have significantly benefited from it, while in the coffee industry. Starbucks has a wide-range in marketing strategies to benefit the customers. During the different obstacles that Starbucks has encountered, they must stay reliable in quality and uphold to adjust to different customer values.

Social interaction is a key concept and necessity each individual experiences. Throughout the lifespan there are different engagements he or she will interact with. There are many different aspects on how one’s social life can be affected, positively or negatively. Social interaction is one of the most important determinants in foreseeing how one is going to develop physically, emotionally, and mentally. This can include milestones that are passed successfully and others that were thwarted in the process.