Food Imperialism

A friend of mine and I were having a discussion about God-awful Starbucks and how unlike the Europeans, we are stuck with this or watered-down Sanka at roadside diners. He sent me this rant and I resonated with it so much, I had to post it here.

When I began traveling in Europe in the early nineties, it was Coca-Cola that made me most chagrined about being an American abroad. A corner grocer in Cetinje, Montenegro, had no fresh fruit on offer but stocked ample supplies of Coca-Cola at half the price of the local bottled water.

Starbucks is the current Coca-Cola. WalMart, who we also love to complain about, is too big for Europe. But imagine a WalMart diced into a hundred squares and seeded across all of London, settling on every third corner and stamping each neighborhood with an American seal. That is Starbucks in London and other parts of Europe.

Perhaps you enjoy their coffee.  Perhaps you think $4-5 a cup is good value for a coffee chain.

Everything is becoming the same everywhere. Even New York, which – except for 9/11 – was always imperturbable to outside forces, looks in many places like a high-end suburban shopping strip with a few floors of flats plonked atop. If you have an interest in heterogeneity, uncertainty and variety in what you eat, who you speak with and where you lay your head when you leave home, could you please tell your British friends to buy their cup of Joe elsewhere?

Starbucks is the latest Stamp Act. Let’s inspire our former colonial oppressors to have a London Coffee Party, tossing shipments into the Thames, casting a vote for difference everywhere. As Patrick Henry would have said, “I know not what course other shoppers may take, but as for me, give me local merchandise, or give me death.”