Let’s not forget about convenience
Today NYTimes columnist Stanley Fish decries the diminished convenience of the modern coffeeshop. Primarily, waiting in lines for neophytes making complicated orders and dancing around the drink prep station with other patrons. Read it here.
Fish addresses issues that were confronted and accepted by nearly every coffee-goer on the planet five years ago, and in general discloses an alarming mediocrity on the NYTimes columnist bench (“Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman are off today”).
However, I must applaud Fish for making a valid critique leveled primarily at Starbuck’s (“wood or concrete floors, lots of earth tones, soft, high-style lighting, open barrels of coffee beans, folk-rock and indie music, photographs of urban landscapes” where else could this be?), but also applies to many of the local shops we frequently praise in these pages.
In one of my favorite shops I recently waited five minutes for half-and-half while a fellow patron searched for his favorite section in the newspaper bin, conveniently located under the drink prep counter. Poor user design is really the only culprit and we can do better.
We should not allow this sudden hipness and ambience to obscure a basic decline in convenience. Good design must work well, as well as please the senses. A few suggestions:
> Multiple drink prep “stations” so that 2-3 folks can doctor their drinks without dancing around each other
> Create well placed stand-and-wait areas for people waiting for drinks that allow them to stay out of everyone else’s way and provide a spot for taking a bite from a pastry and, for extra credit, quick entertainment like newspapers, games, video/web news, etc.
Fish presents the old time diner-style coffee shop as the pinnacle in convenience. The population of this style of shop has been in permanent decline since about 1985, a fact that shows Fish is a decade or three behind the times. Also, it reveals too narrow an appraisal, surely we can all appreciate the elevation in standards for most important metrics: e.g., coffee quality, ambience, workability, healthy food choices, musical diversity, fair-trade/sustainable products, architecture.
Lastly, Mr. Fish, if you really do pine for a diner coffee shop, complete with vinyl stools and raspy-voiced wait-staff, you should start one. We’ll even commend you if you include some modern conveniences like espresso and free wireless.
