Which chains will live, and which will die?

After a year of being stuck inside, do we really want to go to Zizzi’s?

Source: Flickr

On my daily stagger to my local café today, I found myself ruminating on chains. No - I’m not a BDSM aficionado, I’m someone who ponders the fate of Starbucks on my walks. No, no all of you, don’t message me saying you want to be my friend all at once.

Anyway, since getting a takeaway coffee and going on a silly little walk has been the most fun thing to do over the last couple of months, I turned my thoughts to the act itself. Those of you for whom this ritual has been a crutch will have your own stories to tell. Mine involves going to an independent upmarket café, which also happens to be a fishmonger. The smell of salmon while I await my coffee troubles me - from a sensory point of view, not ethical. I haven’t seen “Seaspiracy”, but I gather Fish Bad. Regardless, when you’re waiting for your flat white hungover, smelling roasted coffee beans at 10 a.m. is preferable to feeling like you’re kissing Captain Birdseye.

On my journey back, I pass several chains. Within 10 minutes of my flat, all the classics are there: Costa, Starbucks, Caffè Nero, Pret, but also Gail’s and Joe and the Juice. I’m struck by how significant queues are outside the latter two, yet Starbucks looks as desolate as a child’s toy discarded in a puddle. Why?

How did this cultural titan come to resemble a dilapidated shack? And what about Joe and the Juice? What about Gail’s? What are they doing right that Starbucks is doing wrong? We are creatures of habit, so I suspect it must be something other than cultural exhaustion.

The first answer is obviously the coffee. Once upon a time, Starbucks brought espresso-based coffee to Britain, but now it tastes like cat piss in comparison to the exhaustively resourced stuff sold in independent places.

Yet it can’t be just coffee quality. Britain has a long relationship with caffeine, and for that long history most of the coffee undoubtedly tasted sh*t. The coffeehouses of the 18th century, from which ramblers discussed the South Sea Bubble and the legitimacy of Titus Oates, were not serving up oat milk cortados. My bowels quiver with fear of what was ingested. Following our century-long caffeinated craze, coffee disappeared in the 1800s as the East India Company brought back something called tea, while Victorians got their highs by getting slizzard on gin and mescaline. Coffee’s return was slow, but when it came back in the 1950s, it was in the somewhat sooty instant form.

Meanwhile over the Channel, France was developing the most aesthetically pleasing café culture anywhere in the world. Parisians necked their espressos and sucked on their Gauloises while listening to de Beauvoir, Sartre and Camus talk existentialism.

British national identity defines itself by socking it to the French, so of course we initially viewed that culture as a rather quixotic activity. But Britain mainlines American cultural habits. Starbucks crossed the Atlantic in the 1990s, spitting on Lord North’s grave on its way, and began to exhort its Leviathanic grip on our caffeine receptors in Slough as it had done in Seattle. Britain was not so distant from the Soviet bloc in the 1990s when it excitedly awaited the arrival of recognisable American logos on its streets.

What Starbucks offered in its prime was a homogeneous human experience, which was only appealing for a specific age. Every Starbucks looks essentially the same inside, so you could be anywhere when you were inside one. I remember being 10-years-old abroad with my family, unsettled by the strange land we had flown to. On the second day, we went into a Starbucks, and I remember feeling a distinct comfort in the familiarity.

This standardised, homogenous place was perfect for the hyper-globalised world of the 1990s and the 2000s. American businessmen could visit the Starbucks in Kuala Lumpur airport, and feel slightly less homesick. 

Now, with life on Zoom and ubiquitous smartphones, the faraway world seems nearer than ever. If we want comfort, we can FaceTime, without relying on Starbucks for emotional surrogacy. 

There is something unbearably soulless about present-day Starbucks. That youthful energy has perished. Now, you’re no one when you go into a Starbucks. The fact that they ask for your name dehumanises the experience of going there. There is no option for an organic relationship to be struck with the barista: a characterless, compulsory companionship is concocted by the company.

The fact that you are soulless in a Starbucks was part of its tranquilitic appeal for the hectic decades past, but may now be its chagrin. Social media has entrenched the rampant individualism of the 1980s and 1990s like nothing else: we all have six or seven apps on which we have constructed a self-image. As I have written before, everything we do is now inextricably bound up with our identities.

Source: Flickr

This extends to going to a coffee shop. Going to a Joe and the Juice or Gail’s bolsters, or challenges, an aspect of our identity. We all know the Joe and the Juice ‘type’ (beanie, Doc Martens, corduroy) and we all know the Gail’s ‘type’ (yummy - and I cannot stress this enough - mummy). When I go into a Joe and the Juice, I feel something and am playing someone. Certain restaurants also got lucky with this association between identity and place. The best thing that ever happened to Nando's was the ‘cheeky Nando's’ meme. 

This is why certain chains — Wahaca, Le Pain Quotidien, Bella Italia — have always felt so vapid. They offer no identitarian satisfaction. When I go into a Caffè Nero, I feel nothing.

The best magazines have already played on their consumer’s identities. New Yorker tote bags scream ‘I’m a New Yorker reader.’ Any time I’m in an airport, I buy the Economist, because it makes me feel like a member of the jet-set, scrutinising the leader on the Spac revolution, entertaining the idea of one day being someone who buys Bitcoin, and proclaiming that Indonesia is at a crossroads. 

Similarly, if I’m walking around Soho, I’ll listen to some John Coltrane to make me feel like I’m headed to Ronnie’s in the 1950s. Basically, we want to feel like something ever so slightly more than we are. I, and you, know what type of people go to Joe and the Juice, and know who we feel like going into one. Costa - I’m less sure.

A problematic by-product of this is that the chains that satisfy our egos are undoubtedly more expensive. Our identitarian needs are ripping us off, yet this increased revenue will only mean that these chains go from strength to strength. 

So when wondering which outlets will survive the pandemic, perhaps ask yourself what you feel like when you go into one. Pret? Ah I can be such a typical middle-class Londoner! Pizza Express? Ah, a nostalgic throwback to my youth - let’s get dough balls! Yo Sushi? Why not go in for some conveyor belt fun! Prezzo? Err…