A sign with green lettering on a white background, still unopened, was photographed coming out of a cardboard box—and landed on the trending list. Seven words on the sign: “Please make a purchase before taking a seat.”
That same day, Starbucks China’s response to Blue Whale News was just three words: “Not true.”
The materials are real. A Jiupai News reporter went into a store and asked. An employee said they’d received them and that stores nationwide would start using them on the 20th. There were exceptions, too. Delivery workers and people sheltering from the rain didn’t have to buy anything; pregnant women were welcome as well. Hot water was free. Enforcement wouldn’t be strict: if someone sat down, an employee would come over and give them a reminder.
What’s interesting is the two different messages on the same batch of materials. The poster above is called the “Third Place Initiative.” Its four points are about consideration for one another: don’t use seats as storage, keep your voice down during meetings, and don’t bring in takeaway food with a strong smell. Not a word about making a purchase. Underneath it is the tabletop sign, white with green lettering, saying only: “Please make a purchase before taking a seat.”
One set of materials talks about courtesy. The other sets a condition.
Jiemian News asked a store in Beijing. An employee said the tabletop signs would go out on the 20th and that the materials had arrived. The company said there was no such rule; the store said they’d put the signs out tomorrow. The rule doesn’t exist. The sign does.
A lot of people think this is a PR debacle, but it isn’t. What the sign says doesn’t count; what counts is who decides whether to put it out. The decision is left entirely to individual stores. The cost falls on the employee and the customer in those thirty seconds.
Starbucks has played out this same scenario three times. Two years ago, a store asked customers who hadn’t bought anything to leave, while customer service said there was no company-wide policy. Last July, a store in Tianjin put signs on every table. This September, a store in Nanchong chained up its outdoor chairs after they’d been occupied for long periods. They only unlocked them after the story blew up online, switching instead to verbal reminders.
Look at the moment they chained up the chairs. That was more honest than any sign. Chairs have a cost. It just wasn’t listed on the menu before.
By the end of September, there were more than 8,300 stores in China, and nearly half of the new ones were in cities below the third tier. In March, Boyu’s investment deal closed, giving it a 60% stake in the retail business. Yet in September, the company was still talking about the advantages of the Third Place.
A cup of coffee costs thirty-something yuan, and one chair might be occupied all day. How can both make sense at once? The math is pretty simple, but no one has ever bothered to make it public. I found two different figures for the total number of stores: 8,382 and 8,238—a difference of more than a hundred. I couldn’t find the original official figures, so no one can say for sure which is right.
People in crypto know this well. Block space has never been free. In the early days, gas was cheap. Whoever sent a transaction first got into a block; miners picked and chose what to include, relying on rules everyone more or less accepted. Later, priority fees were written into the protocol and given a clear price. If you wanted your transaction confirmed faster, you paid extra. Seats and block space are really the same kind of resource: both are scarce, and both require people to queue. The only difference is that the way of queueing has gradually shifted from the self-regulation of earlier years to today’s explicit pricing: those who pay more get seated first.
There’s always an exception built in when the system changes. Pregnant women and delivery workers don’t have to buy anything—that’s a whitelist. On-chain systems have them too: some contracts are gas-free, and some addresses are put on exemption lists. Who decides who gets on the list, and by what criteria, isn’t visible to outsiders.
If you’ve ever done that thing yourself—ordered the cheapest Americano, opened your laptop, and sat there all afternoon—you know who the sign is aimed at. Not you. It’s aimed at the people who treat goodwill like an unlimited allowance. And once goodwill is treated as unlimited, when the limits finally tighten, everyone’s allowance gets cut.
If an employee reminds you, don’t rush to argue. The thirty-something yuan you paid didn’t just buy you a cup of coffee. It bought you the right to be accommodated for a while. It’s just like sending a transaction on-chain: what you’re paying for is the cost of getting it processed. That’s all there is to it.
#星巴克 #第三空间 #Web3
$BTC $ETH $USDC
That same day, Starbucks China’s response to Blue Whale News was just three words: “Not true.”
The materials are real. A Jiupai News reporter went into a store and asked. An employee said they’d received them and that stores nationwide would start using them on the 20th. There were exceptions, too. Delivery workers and people sheltering from the rain didn’t have to buy anything; pregnant women were welcome as well. Hot water was free. Enforcement wouldn’t be strict: if someone sat down, an employee would come over and give them a reminder.
What’s interesting is the two different messages on the same batch of materials. The poster above is called the “Third Place Initiative.” Its four points are about consideration for one another: don’t use seats as storage, keep your voice down during meetings, and don’t bring in takeaway food with a strong smell. Not a word about making a purchase. Underneath it is the tabletop sign, white with green lettering, saying only: “Please make a purchase before taking a seat.”
One set of materials talks about courtesy. The other sets a condition.
Jiemian News asked a store in Beijing. An employee said the tabletop signs would go out on the 20th and that the materials had arrived. The company said there was no such rule; the store said they’d put the signs out tomorrow. The rule doesn’t exist. The sign does.
A lot of people think this is a PR debacle, but it isn’t. What the sign says doesn’t count; what counts is who decides whether to put it out. The decision is left entirely to individual stores. The cost falls on the employee and the customer in those thirty seconds.
Starbucks has played out this same scenario three times. Two years ago, a store asked customers who hadn’t bought anything to leave, while customer service said there was no company-wide policy. Last July, a store in Tianjin put signs on every table. This September, a store in Nanchong chained up its outdoor chairs after they’d been occupied for long periods. They only unlocked them after the story blew up online, switching instead to verbal reminders.
Look at the moment they chained up the chairs. That was more honest than any sign. Chairs have a cost. It just wasn’t listed on the menu before.
By the end of September, there were more than 8,300 stores in China, and nearly half of the new ones were in cities below the third tier. In March, Boyu’s investment deal closed, giving it a 60% stake in the retail business. Yet in September, the company was still talking about the advantages of the Third Place.
A cup of coffee costs thirty-something yuan, and one chair might be occupied all day. How can both make sense at once? The math is pretty simple, but no one has ever bothered to make it public. I found two different figures for the total number of stores: 8,382 and 8,238—a difference of more than a hundred. I couldn’t find the original official figures, so no one can say for sure which is right.
People in crypto know this well. Block space has never been free. In the early days, gas was cheap. Whoever sent a transaction first got into a block; miners picked and chose what to include, relying on rules everyone more or less accepted. Later, priority fees were written into the protocol and given a clear price. If you wanted your transaction confirmed faster, you paid extra. Seats and block space are really the same kind of resource: both are scarce, and both require people to queue. The only difference is that the way of queueing has gradually shifted from the self-regulation of earlier years to today’s explicit pricing: those who pay more get seated first.
There’s always an exception built in when the system changes. Pregnant women and delivery workers don’t have to buy anything—that’s a whitelist. On-chain systems have them too: some contracts are gas-free, and some addresses are put on exemption lists. Who decides who gets on the list, and by what criteria, isn’t visible to outsiders.
If you’ve ever done that thing yourself—ordered the cheapest Americano, opened your laptop, and sat there all afternoon—you know who the sign is aimed at. Not you. It’s aimed at the people who treat goodwill like an unlimited allowance. And once goodwill is treated as unlimited, when the limits finally tighten, everyone’s allowance gets cut.
If an employee reminds you, don’t rush to argue. The thirty-something yuan you paid didn’t just buy you a cup of coffee. It bought you the right to be accommodated for a while. It’s just like sending a transaction on-chain: what you’re paying for is the cost of getting it processed. That’s all there is to it.
#星巴克 #第三空间 #Web3
$BTC $ETH $USDC