My active hours are typically very early AM, 2-4AM, until 10AM, and there is definitely a space for this in the market for individuals that just want a place to relax and/or work outside of their home outside of normal working hours. Starbucks used to fill this niche where I lived (they would open at 3,4AM to accommodate students in the area trying to study for finals. Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why, removed all charging stations, and just generally made it a shitty experience to sit inside and do anything at all other than get the hell out. This is almost universal now where i live, a college town with multiple colleges, and I wouldn't even begin to tell you where to find a coffee shop where I could gather with 3-4 other grad students and bang some crazy project out in a few hours anymore, and I have many, many big colleges near me. There's a demand the market isn't meeting, but, that demand didn't rake in the most dollars so here we are and this is some kind of novelty. These kinds of spaces existed basically everywhere in my area circa 2012-2018. They weren't tied to any particular ethnicity, just was a need people apparently had.
>Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why,
They don't want to become homeless shelters.
Homelessness has rapidly increased in the last decade, to the point where CoWork spaces becomes a viable business.
If you want to do a project pay 300$ a month to WeWork. Before the explosion of homelessness, back when Starbucks, Coffee Bean, would let you sit around for hours, a 300$ WeWork membership would be silly.
Homelessness increases --> any place where you can just hang out without paying attracts more homeless people --> there are too many homeless people hanging out for hanging out to remain good for business --> cheap hangouts close --> expensive hangouts like co-working spaces become viable.
Add increased labor costs and your profit margin for late night coffee drops significantly. Add a safety factor, and it becomes a more cost effective option to reduce hours.
We've been seeing that here in my Northern California city for the past few years.
Where are poor people supposed to go ? Where is a person making minimum wage supposed to live.
>First of all, they found, for families and children, one of the largest increases in homelessness, families, a 39 percent spike in 2024 from 2023. And on that January night that they surveyed, they found 150,000 children experiencing in — homelessness.
It makes me uneasy whenever someone suggests forcing an undesirable class of people to become concentrated in institutions (or, perhaps, camps). Historically it hasn't worked out so well. But maybe this time it will be different?
You don’t? Homeless people need somewhere to go and a welcoming coffee shop is a viable option. Removing tables and making it less “sit down” friendly is a good way to drive all of your customers towards grabbing their drinks to-go.
I stopped drinking after I hit 40 and Starbucks was my third place (my favorite Starbucks was the one near DePaul University in Lincoln Park in Chicago).
I am now in the city of Starbucks (Seattle area) and am surprised that many of the Starbucks here (1) don't open late; (2) don't have comfortable seating; (3) aren't sufficiently lit (it's mostly dim, mood lighting -- I can't read paper books in most of them). I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
This is really unfortunate. Howard Schultz was all bout the "third place".
Supposedly the new CEO is aware the decline of Starbucks as a third place is an issue, but we'll see if anything changes. The business perspective of just doing drive-through and pick-up sounds great, but it loses the "experience" that made Starbucks revolutionary. If Starbucks coffee just turns into a transaction, I'm not sure how they can survive when Dunkin, McDonalds, and even Keurig do transactions better, and all sorts of local coffee shops do coffee better.
I spend a lot of money at Starbucks, but very little time. I think Starbucks’ brand was built when it was the opposite; now it’s just a commodity. The value is still there — get a reliable coffee extremely fast, and my toddler loves their egg bites which is a huge value in and of itself — but it’s not so much more valuable than Dunkin’ anymore.
The best “third place” that Starbucks ever created was Roy Street Coffee & Tea in Seattle. It had a great selection of drinks, good food, plenty of seating, and a vibrant atmosphere. Unfortunately, Starbucks decided against expanding on the concept and closed down the café in 2019.
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
I’ve done a lot of both screen and paper based work in coffee shops, including Starbucks, and the thing that’s scarred me after all these years is the constant playing of music. Even with ear plugs and over the ear muffs it can only cancel out so much.
Am only able to spend maybe an hour or so doing anything in a coffee shop now - agree with all the rest of your points though
There used to be a great Starbucks in Kirkland that was 24hr. I am equally frustrated that there are no coffee shops open late even close to the universities in Seattle.
SO recently finished 7 years of grad school at UW and we’re both happy to not spend much time around U dist at night. She still gets the police alerts and it’s not inspiring - such crazy violent things happening there all the time.
In my opinion that could be a reason 24 hr businesses aren’t persisting in that area. But yes this would be a logical place for late night establishments
I’m really surprised about the Northgate location and it really doesn’t make sense to me. The McDonalds next to it is also 24 hour, so maybe it has to do something with being a rest stop for I5?
Salt Lake City oddly enough has (or had?) 24 hour coffee shops that you could hangout at.
>I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
The labor costs and risks of hosting people within your business, especially at later times, is more and more difficult to offset with revenue. Especially if a sufficiently large portion of the population opts to pay for the lower priced goods at to go businesses.
Last time I was in Seattle the Starbucks on 1st Ave (& University?) didn't have any seating at all. 90% of their business seemed to be online to-go orders (the O.G. Starbucks at Pike Place had several hundred people in line!).
Is that a third place? I thought third places were defined as the third "social" area - places you meet and talk with other people. If it's a place to drink and read, like a home away from home, I'm not sure that's the same thing but I'm not sure what to call it.
24h Starbucks are where I studied for the CFA exam. All of the financial podcasts I listen to tell me Starbucks' new CEO seems to want them to go back to the third space glory days[0].
Today, I’m making a commitment: We’re getting back to Starbucks. We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart — a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas. This is our enduring identity. We will innovate from here.
... 3. Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse: We’re committed to elevating the in-store experience — ensuring our spaces reflect the sights, smells and sounds that define Starbucks. Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between “to-go” and “for-here” service.
>do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
Yes, definitely.
For me it's that despite the noise, I have complete confidence that none of it is relevant to me, so I can ignore it completely. In offices, tons of things are relevant for me because I'm a popular random-problem-solver. At home, anything could be relevant, even though most of it is not.
The noise isn't the issue, it's the brainpower spent on triaging the noise.
In case the joke wasn't clear: Waffle House is infamous for often having fights started by inebriated late-night customers - the sort of thing that'll certainly leave you with some stories to tell.
> do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
sir, there is an entire class of developers (including myself) that work remote exclusively out of coffee shops. Its where I can most easily get the creative mojo going.
Coffee shop is excellent background noise for many people. Back in the day I had some audio online and used it instead of white noise. It worked very well to help me concentrate until I started to notice the same sounds since it was a loop.
That’s how I am as well, but I’ve grown to appreciate that everyone has different ideal working environments. The main reason I prefer WFH over RTO is the open office floor plan makes it very difficult for me to focus and work. I find it quite distracting.
The office is dehumanizing. Not only bench seating and cube farms but offices too. Before Facebook gutted the long corridors of offices at the old Sun Micro, it was affectionately called Sun Quentin
I find that Starbucks locations in other countries are much nicer than in the US. Speaking of Mexico and Thailand specifically from my recent experiences. And this is having lived in Seattle most recently in the US.
I think the homeless/addict problem has ruined a lot of urban Starbucks locations in the US.
Most of those places want you to order coffee, preferably with friends (more people per one table) drink it in some reasonable amount of time (<30 minutes), and then leave the table to the next group of guests.
A few laptopers hogging a table for half a day in an otherwise crowded coffeeshop can costs them hundreds of euros/dollars in lost sales.
But i guess this creates a maket for shared workespaces, where you could lease a desk per hour.
Starbucks is getting increasingly hostile, for sure. It's hard to find a Starbucks anymore that has any comfortable seating at all. I went to one in the Chicago burbs recently that had no drive-thru, no indoor seating, and they were visibly annoyed when I ordered inside. Everyone was picking up mobile orders. There were a couple outdoor tables, and that was it. The outlets were disconnected too.
Where I live, I'm very fortunate to have three local chains that are very sit-down friendly. They all have 3-10 locations, so they cover the whole city without succumbing to corporate bullshit. One of them even has a storefront in their roasting/packaging facility. If you want to see how coffee is manufactured and/or you like loud white noise, that's a good place to go.
What I've found is that while local coffee shops are sit-down friendly, they all close at 1, 2, or 3pm, at least where I am. 5-6pm if they're a chain. If I want a small bite to eat, a hot drink, and a place to work after 5 I basically have the option of a bar or a sit-down restaurant. It sucks, and I have no idea where this 3pm closing time thing is coming from. Maybe being too short staffed to have more than just a morning shift?
