Starbucks is taking over Toronto too

The Toronto Star published something very interesting today.

It is a story about Starbucks. I think Vancouverites take our coffee shops for granted. Satrbucks doesn't often make the headlines. In Vancouver we sort of assume it will happen. Death, taxes, Starbucks. All in the same. But Toronto has a critical eye on some of the Starbucks that have gone in their downtown in the last few decades.

If you’ve ever been to Toronto you know that they have as many Tim Horton’s as we do Starbucks. I can understand the appeal. It’s cheap, open 24 hours and is a one stop shop for a snack, meal and/or coffee.

But Toronto isn’t exactly a café-culture town. It’s really a pub town, people streaming up and down the streets of Bloor, College, Queen and Richmond in their respective neighbourhood watering holes. But perhaps Toronto is trying to get some of the café culture acclaim that Vancouver and Montreal so enviously master.

There’s a bit of a history at the Starbucks in Toronto. In 1996 it opened a block away from Dooney’s Café (who was slated to close before Starbucks agreed to sublet* the property back to Graziano Marchese, Dooney’s Café owner), famous literary hang-out of some of the best lefty writers (most of whom come from Vancouver, actually). On the same intersection today (around Bloor and Bathurst) is a Second Cup and an Aroma Espresso (a smaller coffee shop but bourgeouis nevertheless. Starbucks then opened a location near Drake Hotel, known as a bohemian art and culture mecca in a revitalized art gallery district. Now Starbucks announced its new location at Queen and Bathurst, a bit of a dodgy area but a few steps away from the best yuppie gentrifiers in the city in the King West area. The beggars, looking especially sickly, still walk about in the area.

We have to remember that Starbucks, like any efficiently capitalistic big business calculates where they open. Businesses open up shop on projected earnings (i.e. income level in area, street traffic, other businesses in the area that will encourage or hinder its presence etc). So Starbucks knows a thing or two about Queen and Bathurst. It knows that the income level is going up. It knows the area is yuppifying. It knows that it has the range and concentration of amenity in the area to attract street traffic. So, move over Richard Florida and your “Creative Class” thesis. Screw the gay-index and the bohemian-index. Lets get us a Starbucks-index.

*Sublet, meaning that the land is still held by Starbucks and profits still goes to Starbucks. You just can’t win….

-Guest post submitted by Erica Blair