Starbucks comes to Barton, but leave your laptop at home
You’ve heard of Starbucks. U.S. coffee chain, kind of upscale. Comfy furniture, sometimes even a fireplace. Wi-Fi, naturally, and hip music. And by the cash, a big tip jar.
Well, I’ve just been to a different kind of Starbucks. It has none of the above.
But what really sets this one apart is location. This Starbucks is on Barton Street. Never thought I’d see the day.
Starbucks took its time coming to Hamilton. Maybe it wasn’t sure if this industrial city was its kind of town. The chain had already opened in Guelph, Oakville, Burlington. Then Ancaster.
Finally, in 1999, it came to Hamilton proper, with a store on Upper James near Rymal. There have been a few others since. Locke Street, for instance, the place real estate agents call trendy. No surprise that Starbucks would go there.
But Barton, a street that’s been struggling for decades?
Target didn't team up with Hortons
This has everything to do with that other American phenomenon, Target, now in the midst of opening some 135 stores across Canada.
In the States, Target has partnered with Starbucks for about a dozen years. As Target prepared to set up in this country, some speculated the chain would team up with Hortons instead. O Canada.
Didn’t happen. And that is why a new Starbucks has opened at 1211 Barton Street East, just inside the front doors of the new Target. Some people call these coffee shops Tarbucks.
It’s Charlotte behind the counter. She’s a cashier for Target, but is on coffee duty right now – so has switched from a red top to black.
I tell her I haven’t been in Starbucks much and might need a little guidance. She’s hearing that a lot. With her help, I end up with something called a decaf non-fat mocha grande. I wonder about the ginger molasses cookie. She says it’s good. (It’s certainly big – 360 calories.)
Charlotte’s taken some time with me. I look for the tip jar. In Target, she tells me, that’s against the rules.
Target’s slogan is "Expect more, pay less." That’s not the selling point at Starbucks. My coffee and cookie, with tax, $7.23.
No laptops on the tables here. "I know," says one young server. "What’s a Starbucks without Wi-Fi?
No Timbits in Seattle
There is no Hortons in Seattle, the city where the chain was born. Maybe Hortons did that out of respect, or maybe it was just scared.
But this new Starbucks at Barton and Ottawa is trespassing on sacred ground, just down the street from the world’s first Hortons on Ottawa at Dunsmure. Those nervy Americans.
You can’t see that historic first Hortons from the new Starbucks window, but you can see the one they built on the other side of this strange retail complex that used to be Centre Mall.
So with that jumbo ginger cookie to work off, I go hiking across the desolate tarmac to that Hortons.
No effect on business here at all, a manager tells me. But she’s curious, wants to know how it was at the competition. "Good," I say, "and expensive."
And unlike that Starbucks across the way, there’s Wi-Fi here. On Barton Street anyway, Hortons just might be hippest.
[email protected] | @PaulWilsonCBC
http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/talk/story/2013/04/15/hamilton-starbucks.html
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