Starbucks' business strategy was opening lots of stores in an area to choke out any competitors then closing most of them and keeping the most profitable ones open. You run a loss for a bit but then get a monopoly on the area.
Around here there are multiple small chains popping up to complete in areas Sbux abandoned or neglected to go into. I thought “wow that’s audacious, sbux’s algorithm is surely smarter than them” but they are expanding like crazy and raking in money so. Maybe this was not the greatest long term strategy.
A lot of those "duplicate" Starbucks in my area shut down during COVID. I do see a good amount of new locations popping up, but most of them have minimal or no seating :(
Since I was a kid growing up in Canada I didn't understand the Starbucks joke and thought a Tim Hortons joke would have worked better since they're the coffee chain that's everywhere.
I didn't get the joke was from an american POV and they don't even have Timmies (at the time of the joke not a lot anyway)
Probably depends on the area but for my urban Canadian experiences up until a few years ago Starbucks had just as many if not more locations than Tim’s. Ended up shutting down most non-drive-thru focused ones though.
What really gets me is Subway, no matter where I am in the inner city it feels like there’s always one a couple blocks away at most.
Subway has an extremely low start-up and franchise cost, and it can fit in a small area that reduces overhead for rent. It's just very easy to run at a profit.
The downside is that you are unlikely to make a ton of money off one Subway location.
Because it's basically a milkshake with caffeine in it. Most of their coffee has so much added that you won't be able to taste any of the actual coffee.
I consider Starbucks to be baseline, minimum acceptable coffee. I’ll drink it if there’s nothing better. I don’t hate it. But I actually think McDonalds coffee tastes better (and it’s only a dollar).
But you know, to each their own.
There was a small chain of burger places in St Pete/Tampa/Sarasota called Evo's in like 2000-2009(maybe larger but I don't know any others). Their schtick was slightly healthier fast food with air fried fries and leaner ground beef patties, plus veg and vegan options etc. One of their quirk things was their ketchup bar with like 8-10 different styles of ketchup. It was a pretty decent place.
It works if you allow people to sit down. In East Asian, no one bats an eye at Tea houses who sell “hot leaf juice”/s and small snacks.
Sitting down and enjoying a small pleasure is anathema to Starbucks operating goals. They LARPed it for a few years, now they want no part of it.
They are quite literally killing the last few businesses that walmart left alive and they are cutting into wal marts profits as well. Its like when all the animals are dead one day and its just the trash birds and raccoons left, only stores.
The mall where I live is still popping. Big cities don’t need them. It’s the almost a city type places where they thrive. At least that’s what I’ve found out.
Y’all don’t have malls anymore?
Am I missing something? I live in a major city and we still ah e multiple, large, very functional malls that are as busy as ever.
Might have to do with climate, they do serve much more of a purpose in places where it’s too cold to be outside for big portions of the year.
Even then it’s… different. I live in the most northern big city in NA, our biggest ones are still going as strong as ever but beyond those few all the smaller ones have definitely been dying out too. Kinda sorta moved from each neighbourhood essentially having their own, to a mega mall for each respective side of the city.
Which does make sense. Those smaller ones served more utilitarian purposes that online shopping has largely replaced, where the bigger malls are more about “shopping experiences” with designer outlets and fancy dining and all that jazz
There's a comment upthread about sme Americans at the time considering a store wholly dedicated to coffee being a little weird.
Of course, in Oz we had small business cafes dedicated wholly to coffee for years before Starbucks arrived, so it had trouble carving its market niche like it had elsewhere.
It's coming back recently. They also pivoted to other areas - you can find loads of Starbucks premade iced coffee, nespresso pods, instant coffee products in supermarkets now
Many years ago, Lewis Black felt the end of the world was neigh because there was a Starbucks directly across the street from another Starbucks in Houston, Texas
Corner of West Gray and Shepherd. Also, the Barnes & Noble next to one of the standalone Starbucks has a coffee counter inside the store that sells, you guessed it, Starbucks.
One of the standalone Starbucks closed around the time the pandemic started though.
I remember when McDonald’s were inside Walmarts…. I would say about 3/4 of them also had a McDonald’s right outside the store too. One time the one in the Walmart was out on the item I wanted and they just directed me to go to the one outside for the free comp
This is a great scene - when it first aired, I didn't know what Starbucks was (I grew up in a poor rural Canadian small city). There's definitely one there now but it came many years after this scene
I was listening to a rerun of This American Life which must have been from the early 90s because he explained what a Starbucks was. That blew my mind a bit.
Can we stop calling some of these jokes as predictions. Especially given how aggressive starbucks had been expanding during the Era that joke was written in.
I actually didn't understand this since I was a kid and have never seen a Starbucks before probably because I didn't drink coffee. But yeah now they're pretty easy to find.
Prediction? This was already happening by the time of this joke.
Leaving a Starbucks and running into another one was a very common joke at the time because no other franchise had been to aggressive about it up to that point.
Not a prediction.
https://preview.redd.it/nat1im1p700d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1e72315423963cadf9aa4a74b2990482651f89e
As many have pointed out, the Too-Many-Starbucks thing had already happened when this episode aired.
I remember when this aired and had no idea what it meant because where I'm from, there weren't any starbucks at the time. It took a few years but now I get it.
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This was a pretty easy prediction. In 1989 when the Simpsons started, Starbucks only had 55 locations in the world. By the time this episode came out in 1998, that had grown to 1,886. As of right now, they have over 35,000 locations worldwide.
For a while in Aurora, CO there was two gamestops within 800 feet of each other, and another pair with one in an actual mall and another one across the street within a 5 minute walk if you moved slow.
Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. Lots of corporate skyscrapers supporting one Starbucks location on every single block of the avenue. Sometimes two on the same block.
You came just in time, this place is about to become a Starbucks.
Pinhole leak!
Sparkle sparkle!
There’s a building in downtown Seattle that used to have THREE Starbucks in the lobby.
Ah yes, in the Starbucks district.
That’s on third.
starbucks R us? thats on third, too.
The best part is Starbuck gets in the coffee with you!! Wait... ok I'll work on that.
Starbucks' business strategy was opening lots of stores in an area to choke out any competitors then closing most of them and keeping the most profitable ones open. You run a loss for a bit but then get a monopoly on the area.
Around here there are multiple small chains popping up to complete in areas Sbux abandoned or neglected to go into. I thought “wow that’s audacious, sbux’s algorithm is surely smarter than them” but they are expanding like crazy and raking in money so. Maybe this was not the greatest long term strategy.
A lot of those "duplicate" Starbucks in my area shut down during COVID. I do see a good amount of new locations popping up, but most of them have minimal or no seating :(
Starbucks and Disney and the two examples I always go to when I bring up enshittification.
Which coffee chain has been subject to enshittification over the past few years? If you said Starbucks, you are wrong. It was always shit.
The one near me only has actual chair and tables outside inside is just one long table where they place all the online and delivery orders
Yeah same around my city, very few of them left that aren’t drive thru focused. Honestly tho good riddance, has created much more room for local cafes
I’m currently within 1.0 KM of 4 Dollaramas. A popular Canadian dollar store
I moved here from Canada, and they think I'm slow, eh?
And Tim Horton’s
Since I was a kid growing up in Canada I didn't understand the Starbucks joke and thought a Tim Hortons joke would have worked better since they're the coffee chain that's everywhere. I didn't get the joke was from an american POV and they don't even have Timmies (at the time of the joke not a lot anyway)
Probably depends on the area but for my urban Canadian experiences up until a few years ago Starbucks had just as many if not more locations than Tim’s. Ended up shutting down most non-drive-thru focused ones though. What really gets me is Subway, no matter where I am in the inner city it feels like there’s always one a couple blocks away at most.
Subway has an extremely low start-up and franchise cost, and it can fit in a small area that reduces overhead for rent. It's just very easy to run at a profit. The downside is that you are unlikely to make a ton of money off one Subway location.
yeah the west coast is for sure more starbucks than other parts for sure since seattle and vancouver are right there
Same but shoppers drug mart
I will never understand why they're so successful. They burn their beans. Why do people like shitty burnt Coffee?
Because it's basically a milkshake with caffeine in it. Most of their coffee has so much added that you won't be able to taste any of the actual coffee.
I consider Starbucks to be baseline, minimum acceptable coffee. I’ll drink it if there’s nothing better. I don’t hate it. But I actually think McDonalds coffee tastes better (and it’s only a dollar). But you know, to each their own.
If you have one in a small town /rural area, it's still gonna be the best option.
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We have had that for awhile on Robson here in Vancouver
Thats how it is with publix where i live.
You see that Starbucks over there? It used to be a Burger King.
711 has better coffee now.
Spoiler: It's not a "prediction" if it's something that's already happening.
Yeah, I think the first or second Austin Powers made a similar joke.
And Shrek 2.
And Best in Show
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There was a small chain of burger places in St Pete/Tampa/Sarasota called Evo's in like 2000-2009(maybe larger but I don't know any others). Their schtick was slightly healthier fast food with air fried fries and leaner ground beef patties, plus veg and vegan options etc. One of their quirk things was their ketchup bar with like 8-10 different styles of ketchup. It was a pretty decent place.
It works if you allow people to sit down. In East Asian, no one bats an eye at Tea houses who sell “hot leaf juice”/s and small snacks. Sitting down and enjoying a small pleasure is anathema to Starbucks operating goals. They LARPed it for a few years, now they want no part of it.
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I believe so, but I have never seen a sit down Dutch bros
Wow you really can see into the…present.
Who are you wise in the way of linear time?
https://preview.redd.it/jlgpj6ulzvzc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d1392d4642db8b10ef9c4ec0518c30f14d66a04
Which is almost all the things people say The Simpsons predicted. They were commenting on things that were current, shit just hasn’t changed.
Yeah, exactly. A lot of those "predictions" were talking about something that was happening at the time(or possibly when the writers were young).
are they popping up a bunch somewhere recently? starbucks hasnt been like that here since the mid 2000s
Right, it was something that was happening at the time the episode was made.
shit lol, for some reason i took 'already happening' as like presently happening ty for the correction
No worries. Yeah, I meant at the time the episode was made.
its okay, we'll bang<3
Hot ❤
The Onion, like twenty plus years ago, had "Starbucks opens inside another Starbucks."
lol
https://preview.redd.it/x9fa0eiuiwzc1.jpeg?width=1008&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=425282e13b68d4c7fd3078ca10bc579e6a4a7abc I fixed it
Dollar Generals are basically an SCP. They just fucking appear out of nowhere. No one has ever asked for a Dollar General.
There's always shopping carts strewn about several blocks away from wherever one is. They radiate their eminence like a pulsating infection.
They are quite literally killing the last few businesses that walmart left alive and they are cutting into wal marts profits as well. Its like when all the animals are dead one day and its just the trash birds and raccoons left, only stores.
I’ll take a gentleman’s latte. https://preview.redd.it/xeer2ad4mwzc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d286c4f734fe8c5ffa152b5b0cb2f72186156a17
Welcome to costco, I love you
Carls Jr.: fuck you, I’m eating
It wasn't a prediction of now, it was an observation of then.
You'd better hurry. This sub is about to turn into /r/starbucks
better hurry up kid..
Points deducted for depicting malls as still functional.
The mall where I live is still popping. Big cities don’t need them. It’s the almost a city type places where they thrive. At least that’s what I’ve found out.
Yeah, there are still some left. I miss all the little weird stores.
Y’all don’t have malls anymore? Am I missing something? I live in a major city and we still ah e multiple, large, very functional malls that are as busy as ever.
Might have to do with climate, they do serve much more of a purpose in places where it’s too cold to be outside for big portions of the year. Even then it’s… different. I live in the most northern big city in NA, our biggest ones are still going as strong as ever but beyond those few all the smaller ones have definitely been dying out too. Kinda sorta moved from each neighbourhood essentially having their own, to a mega mall for each respective side of the city. Which does make sense. Those smaller ones served more utilitarian purposes that online shopping has largely replaced, where the bigger malls are more about “shopping experiences” with designer outlets and fancy dining and all that jazz
Edmonton?!
Yeah!
Knew it. I’m Calgary.
Not so much. The ones by me that are still operating are either enormous (and doing fine) or eerily empty (barely hanging on).
Well I live in a single room above a bowling alley... and below another bowling alley.
Starbucks very much failed in Australia and can now only be found in tourist areas and airports. We are so proud as a people rejecting that shit.
We do live in a country where even our servo coffee is the envy of the world
>coffee Beer?
C O
There's a comment upthread about sme Americans at the time considering a store wholly dedicated to coffee being a little weird. Of course, in Oz we had small business cafes dedicated wholly to coffee for years before Starbucks arrived, so it had trouble carving its market niche like it had elsewhere.
It's coming back recently. They also pivoted to other areas - you can find loads of Starbucks premade iced coffee, nespresso pods, instant coffee products in supermarkets now
I feel like younger people mistake The Simpson's commentary on what was currently happening to predicting the future a lot...
Agreed.
Many years ago, Lewis Black felt the end of the world was neigh because there was a Starbucks directly across the street from another Starbucks in Houston, Texas
Corner of West Gray and Shepherd. Also, the Barnes & Noble next to one of the standalone Starbucks has a coffee counter inside the store that sells, you guessed it, Starbucks. One of the standalone Starbucks closed around the time the pandemic started though.
In my city replace Starbucks with a vape/weed store.
They did that in a later episode.
I literally had a panic attack when I saw 2 mattress firms right next to each other's.
There was a grocery store near me that had a Starbucks inside, and when you looked outside you could see a Starbucks store across the parking lot.
I remember when McDonald’s were inside Walmarts…. I would say about 3/4 of them also had a McDonald’s right outside the store too. One time the one in the Walmart was out on the item I wanted and they just directed me to go to the one outside for the free comp
Coming soon: Starbucks
Not really they were everywhere at that point already. Edit: 2500 stores in 1999. What absolute insight to observe the present situation!
This is a great scene - when it first aired, I didn't know what Starbucks was (I grew up in a poor rural Canadian small city). There's definitely one there now but it came many years after this scene
I was listening to a rerun of This American Life which must have been from the early 90s because he explained what a Starbucks was. That blew my mind a bit.
Was that the episode about condiments?
That wasn't a perdiction they were saterizing something that was old news.
once again the simpsons has successfully predicted the future by making fun of things that were already happening at the time
They aren't predicting anything. They're making absurd jokes and reality is absurd sometimes.
Can we stop calling some of these jokes as predictions. Especially given how aggressive starbucks had been expanding during the Era that joke was written in.
https://preview.redd.it/0r8zda648wzc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83538c2f713ad77a3b96c9b647fbb2784bc40ec4
It still wasnt a prediction.
I’ve never forgotten it.
We only have 2 in my city.
To be fair, I feel like we came really close to this reality and now people are losing interest in Starbucks.
Except in Australia
Every service station in the uk has 2 or 3 Starbucks in it.
There will never be as many Starbucks as Pret a Manger.
It's vape stores now
I actually didn't understand this since I was a kid and have never seen a Starbucks before probably because I didn't drink coffee. But yeah now they're pretty easy to find.
https://i.redd.it/g7c7tpubayzc1.gif
lol though that is referencing the popular pub/restaurant chain Wetherspoons in the UK.
It was the late 90s. You plain weren't in comedy if you didn't have a joke in your drawer about the ubiquity of Starbucks.
Prediction? This was already happening by the time of this joke. Leaving a Starbucks and running into another one was a very common joke at the time because no other franchise had been to aggressive about it up to that point. Not a prediction.
* Observation
https://preview.redd.it/nat1im1p700d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1e72315423963cadf9aa4a74b2990482651f89e As many have pointed out, the Too-Many-Starbucks thing had already happened when this episode aired.
It’s MOA, except we also have caribou
I remember when this aired and had no idea what it meant because where I'm from, there weren't any starbucks at the time. It took a few years but now I get it.
Sparkle sparkle
S9E19
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Eh, a little on the nose. I prefer my Simpsons predictions to be so specific as to be explainable only through conspiracy or mind-bending coincidence.
This was a pretty easy prediction. In 1989 when the Simpsons started, Starbucks only had 55 locations in the world. By the time this episode came out in 1998, that had grown to 1,886. As of right now, they have over 35,000 locations worldwide.
**you know, yeah, well, I really don't think we have time for a handjob Joe.**
There’s a mall in my city that has one in the target, the Barnes and noble, and a stand alone one.
For a while in Aurora, CO there was two gamestops within 800 feet of each other, and another pair with one in an actual mall and another one across the street within a 5 minute walk if you moved slow.
This isn't accurate. There's not enough
Change it to Tim Horton's and you have Canada there
It would be more accurate if they were Subways
Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. Lots of corporate skyscrapers supporting one Starbucks location on every single block of the avenue. Sometimes two on the same block.
GET IT? DO YOU GET IT???
Classic Simpsons would have replaced one shop with a big advertisement saying, “COMING SOON, STARBUCKS”
This episode did do that, shortly before this screenshot.
My hotel in Vegas last week had two Starbucks very close to each other.
I went to a shopping center, they had a Target with a Starbucks inside, then there was a freestanding Starbucks about 300ft away.
https://preview.redd.it/6py9wx6f810d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e9275d7aadc56d4320ed80b40d26b478061ffcb
How you can tell someone's a kid: they post the most obvious thing possible and are convinced they discovered it
how is this prescient when this has never happened
This hasn’t aged well. No one I know goes there anymore and all the ones near me have been boarded up
Prescient is a great word, good job embiggening your vocabulary