I mean, cool they won’t have to deal with magats but I still don’t really like the company, they frequently open up shops right next to the Cambodian mom and pop shops to try and oust them. They aren’t usually successful since the family run places operate at 1/5 the cost but it’s still shady business practices.
A while ago there was a wonderful little mom-and-pop chocolate shop/cafe ten minutes’ walk from my house. They had four different versions of hot chocolate on the menu, at different levels of strength, and the chocolates in their display case were handmade in the store – you could see from the ordering queue straight into the kitchen – and they were just to die for. See’s and Ghirardelli could only dream of making chocolates that good. It was a great little place we would all go for a treat.
A few years ago now, a new Starbucks opened up in that same strip mall. It was less than a quarter mile from another Starbucks in an indoor mall, but that one didn’t have a drive-thru, you see, so they needed another. One of the conditions of Starbucks accepting the lease was that there wouldn’t be any other high-end cafés in the area, so the city, seeing dollar signs, doubled the chocolate shop’s rent. They were out of business before the year was out.
Yeah, I’d say that’s a good reason to be mad. It’s also weird, the demand around here would be for the mom and pop shops over any chain. But if the corpos get to cheat with backhanded deals with the city, not much you can do about it.
I recently moved to an area with mostly chains but it’s slowly changing. People on nextdoor are bitter (and honestly pretty awful) about it, like “oh no, my liquor store turned into a coffee shop, the world has gone to shit.”
I mean, cool they won’t have to deal with magats but I still don’t really like the company, they frequently open up shops right next to the Cambodian mom and pop shops to try and oust them. They aren’t usually successful since the family run places operate at 1/5 the cost but it’s still shady business practices.
Could be worse.
A while ago there was a wonderful little mom-and-pop chocolate shop/cafe ten minutes’ walk from my house. They had four different versions of hot chocolate on the menu, at different levels of strength, and the chocolates in their display case were handmade in the store – you could see from the ordering queue straight into the kitchen – and they were just to die for. See’s and Ghirardelli could only dream of making chocolates that good. It was a great little place we would all go for a treat.
A few years ago now, a new Starbucks opened up in that same strip mall. It was less than a quarter mile from another Starbucks in an indoor mall, but that one didn’t have a drive-thru, you see, so they needed another. One of the conditions of Starbucks accepting the lease was that there wouldn’t be any other high-end cafés in the area, so the city, seeing dollar signs, doubled the chocolate shop’s rent. They were out of business before the year was out.
I’m still mad about that.
Yeah, I’d say that’s a good reason to be mad. It’s also weird, the demand around here would be for the mom and pop shops over any chain. But if the corpos get to cheat with backhanded deals with the city, not much you can do about it.
I recently moved to an area with mostly chains but it’s slowly changing. People on nextdoor are bitter (and honestly pretty awful) about it, like “oh no, my liquor store turned into a coffee shop, the world has gone to shit.”