Thomas Jefferson pronounced a tree of autocracy contingency be rested from time to time with a blood of patriots and tyrants. I’ve always fanciful myself a patriot, prepared to drain if required for liberty’s cause. So it didn’t warn me final weekend when we found impractical arise of bravery while station in line for coffee. A tellurian franchise, a store’s name doesn’t matter. What does matter is my realization, station in a asymptotic queue, that we contingency answer freedom’s call. My tree of autocracy is a coffee tree, my George III is a store franchisee, and my fight is not opposite taxation yet representation, yet violent bias of mobile over in-store orders.
Rest positive we am not some technophobe, a Luddite who spends his days convincing other Americans that time zones infer London is “in a future.” (That’s silly. As we’re reminded each New Year’s Eve, it’s Australia that’s in a future.) Plus we used worldly difference asymptotic to report a line that approaches yet never seems to strech a income register, and queue when line would have worked usually fine. My global-futurist travel cred is over reproach.
Now that I’ve suggested my conflict position, Big Coffee, since should we be concerned? A satisfactory question. For we have no stripes on my shoulders, no tanks in my division. Yet station in line with me are large feet soldiers from America’s heartland. Harried mothers of youth boys, who prolonged for a moment’s assent over a café mocha in an enclosed space that doesn’t smell like a foot. Why retaliate them with delayed service? Aspiring screenwriters hunkered down during your prolonged tables from emergence to dusk, pausing not with German pointing to pre-order iced-coffees, yet rather usually when their Muses inspire. Who will write a subsequent Glengarry Glen Ross in a dystopian destiny we envision, where no artist is served until you’ve offering 10 one-pump, no-whip lattes to your mobile gods? Cyclists, book clubs and financial advisors in circuitously plush chairs all agree: this is unwashed pool.
Remember, we’re in your store since we’ve been led to trust we wish us in your store. This isn’t some bloodless accomplishment core manned usually with self-driving forklifts – not yet, anyway. Yours is Class A sell space, gently illuminated and luxuriously appointed. If it weren’t for a yoga studio down a street, this would be a town’s amicable center. So quit being coy. You offer giveaway WiFi. You play Miles Davis. Everything smells of cinnamon. Why, your intense abode is so pleasing that it we intend to use it as credentials in my family’s subsequent Christmas card. Like a residence during twilight in a Thomas Kinkade painting, your store is one large come hither look: once inside, since a go thither treatment?
It’s not as yet we haven’t faced a emanate before. When we introduced drive-thru coffee service, we didn’t play favorites. we know we allocated resources sincerely since to this day I’m indifferent between a in-store and drive-thru lines. If a mobile enthusiast is your many adored patron, we can live with it. Just be honest with us station in line and, like another famous recalcitrant, contend a words: Non Serviam. As things mount this minimal eye-contact, passive-aggressive viewpoint is underneath you. Believe me, we know when I’m being dealt with passive-aggressively. If it were a golf shot, I’d be on a Tour.
I expect a free-market respond of a standard intelligent reader of these pages – two words, distinction motive. Time is money, and mobile orders are both higher-volume and higher-margin business, all things being equal. But are all things equal? Today’s mobile machiatto sequence is tomorrow’s worker espresso delivery. In other difference technologies change, yet enthusiast abandonment is forever. Keep this adult and before prolonged you’ll have no in-store enthusiast bottom during all. Who afterwards will buy a tumblers, totes and mugs adorning your shelves?
Well, I’ve pronounced my piece, Big Coffee, that we can accept or reject. But if we reject it, know that I’m expected to follow a animal spirits into a marketplace and open my possess coffee shop. But what to call it? Something natural-sounding that reassures my in-store business that they will always come first. A Bird in a Hand Coffee? Perfect.