are coffee shops the new Walgreens ?

Are coffee shops the new drugstore

  • Total voters
    3
DdBob

DdBob

Dogue in teh desert
You know the walgreens on every corner which kinda overtook the gas station on every corner and now we seemingly have Dunkin Donuts/Starbucks/Dutch bros. on every corner not too mention random local shops popping up (not on corners). I've been a coffee nut <<<<<see what I did.......since probably 90, 91 I mean good coffee is great....black coffee or perhaps some milk in it or a basic latte/cappucino but wtf if with all these "coffee with sprinkles on top psuedo Dairy Queen drinks and why are people spending (once tip included) like 7, 8 bucks a day on coffee, sitting in a drive thru line to boot...


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Never heard of or seen a Dutch Bros, so I’m going to say no. Dunkin Doughnuts is a coffee shop? I thought it was a doughnut shop. I don’t drink coffee so I don’t pay attention.
 
Flamencology said:
Those aren’t coffee shops.

#snob
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I agree but that is what mericuh is after...the psuedo corporate coffee. Myself just buys good beans , always have and makes it at home unless I'm traveling. I can see the WFH types hitting up a local shop for a couple hours a day to get outa the house but I seriously do not get the 'leave for work at the last minute /stop and spend 8 bucks at the fufu drink place/ rush to workraging the whole way" types....hence the "drugstore on every corner". In the 70's and 80's it was gas stations in the 90's and early 2000's walgreens and other drugstores and now it seems to be these
 
jp_nyc said:
They’re really milk shake shops.
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Interestingly, Walgreens and other drugstores used to have soda fountains, so…

Anyway, at one point Wags was opening a store every 14-17 hours in the 2000s. CVS was on a similar trajectory. It was a real estate play given that there’s a finite number of main on main corners and drugstores were competing with banks for prime locations during the commercial real estate bubble. Now that online banking and mail order pharmacy have become more of the norm because of customer preference, insurance/employer/government requirements, and labor costs, there’s simply less opportunity when it comes to throwing up a bank or a Walgreens/CVS on every other corner. Plenty of those insane ‘00s era Wags and CVS stores have closed—either because they weren’t profitable or because mergers with other chains provided other, better locations.

Expensive drive-thru coffee drinks are still holding strong (inexplicably) in terms of customer demand. And while Starbucks is corporately held, there’s at least 6 zillion franchise coffee concepts in the marketplace that don’t give any shits about over saturation or cannibalization. And given that busy main on main intersections are the best place to put one of these traffic-wrecking, wallet-obliterating diabetes vendors—well, that’s why you see them everywhere. Because they’re highly visible sites in high traffic areas.
 
Chad said:
Never heard of or seen a Dutch Bros, so I’m going to say no. Dunkin Doughnuts is a coffee shop? I thought it was a doughnut shop. I don’t drink coffee so I don’t pay attention.
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Dunkin rebranded dropping the “donuts” from their name a few years back to put the emphasis on their coffee drinks.
 
We’re all aware that Starbucks mainly exists to provide bathrooms and wifi to people on sad business trips, right? The coffee is just something you buy to justify doing offsite job interviews and conference calls in public.
 
Dutch Bros is aggressive with new locations & since they went public, I'd guess they're just going to keep up the pace.

TBH, their coffee is pretty mediocre but no one is actually going there for coffee...they go for the 'betus beverages

edit:
Plus, they tend to hire attractive young staff who are encouraged to be super energetic and chatty with the customers. That attracts a unique demographic of creepy weird dudes who like the leer at the young women & give off 'the stripper really digs me' vibes.
 
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My company recently did some design for a new chain called 7 brew. Drive through only, specializing in milkshakey drinks. I’ve had the milkshakey type stuff and just regular coffee. Both were good.
 
Several things come to mind:
1) Dunkin was right to drop the donuts from their name since their donuts became so bland.
2) Dunkin coffee is better than Starbucks, but, in my mind, that is a low bar.
3) Most coffee places have gone too far into all the fancy drinks and are more like some type of hip boutique than a place to have coffee and conversation.
4) I miss the old coffeehouses of the 50s and 60s. They were funky, relaxed places that encouraged hanging out, enjoying artistic endeavors, and having deep discussions. Most coffee shops now seem to be more on the "gas and go" model or are highly corporate.
 
Don't even get me started on cupcake only bakeries. I should have hopped on that boat a long time ago. I'd be retired by now. And we have like 4 or 5 "fancy" donut shops here and they're all the same. Vanilla cake donut with different, forgettable toppings.
We only have 2 Dunkins and 2 Starbucks here though as far as I know and I drive all over the place. That's in probably a 100 square mile area.
 
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