Brittany never got to say goodbye
She left Starbucks without saying goodbye, and an 11-year-old girl misses her.
Once upon a time there was an 11-year-old girl named Aerin who really loved Starbucks.
What she really loved, I suppose, was what Starbucks represented.
Because she lived in an apartment in New York City with her mother, and there was a Starbucks across the street, which was the one place where her mother felt comfortable letting Aerin walk alone.
She’d hang out there sometimes on weekends, meeting friends, and made friends with one of the baristas, named Brittany.
Aerin and her mom both agreed that this was a special relationship, because Brittany was one of the first people Aerin had befriended first, on her own -- as opposed to a classmate, or someone she’d met through her mom.
One day not long ago, Aerin came home to find her mom with a sad look on her face.
“Who died?” Aerin asked.
“It’s not a person,” her mom replied. “It’s the Starbucks.”
Closing time
A writer for Curbed, which is an online publication covering New York City real estate, recounted this story recently, as an illustration of the way that New Yorkers supposedly came to love Starbucks -- and how many of them reacted recently when many of the chain’s stores were closed without warning:
Starbucks closed just over 2 percent of locations across the country, but 8.5 percent of those stores were in New York.
According to one count, more than half were in the five boroughs. Landlords fumed. (”No warning, no heads-up.”) The city sent a strongly worded letter suggesting a failure to comply with labor laws. Unionized workers claimed retaliation.
(For what it’s worth, Starbucks disputes the idea that it’s actually 2 percent of Starbucks that have closed, but it’s definitely in the many hundreds at least.)
The Opposite Effect
I read all this just as a study came across my virtual desk, in which the folks at Realtor.com tried to calculate how much the closing of a neighborhood Starbucks can affect the value of homes around it.
It’s not nothing, they conclude. A while back we wrote about a phenomenon called the Starbucks Effect, in which the opening of a Starbucks is considered a sign that an area is on the rise -- and correlates with rising real estate prices.
I mean, we all remember when Starbucks seemed more likely to multiply than bunnies in a hutch, right? (”New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks.”)
So, Realtor wanted to see if closing a Starbucks (or a bunch of Starbucks) had the opposite effect. Their take:
“The presence of the cafe could then add to the area’s appeal, along with the other factors that convinced the company to open the location to begin with,” explains Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.
“Put differently, Starbucks doesn’t cause home values to rise on its own; instead, it tends to open stores in neighborhoods where other factors, such as economic growth, rising demand, and increasing property values, are already at play.”
Jones says closures can reverse this perception, signaling a decline in foot traffic or consumer demand.
Starbucks closures may not immediately tank property values, but they can signal weakening demand, reduced walkability, and shifting neighborhood dynamics—especially when clustered in key commercial corridors.
But, have you been to the Upper East Side?
I don’t think Aerin’s Upper East Side neighborhood is going to be less valuable without a Starbucks, but I appreciate her fondness for the brand -- and for her long-lost barista, Brittany.
The Curbed article really paints a picture: she’s actually saved one of the cups Brittany once signed for her, and she wrote a card to thank her for being her friend -- but with the store closed, there was no way to deliver it to her.
How will she survive without her neighborhood Starbucks? Actually there’s a clue in her answer that might explain why Starbucks closed so many locations to begin with:
“She plans to start going to the location near her school, five minutes further from home.”
7 other things
President Trump’s plan to add an expansive ballroom to the White House will mean the demolition of the entire East Wing, which was expected to be fully torn down by this weekend, according to a senior administration official. (The New York Times)
The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance rose 6 percent last year, more than double the rate of inflation, approaching an average of almost $27,000 for a family plan. The average deductible for individual plans is now almost $1,900, compared to $1,773 last year. (The Hill)
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a new congressional map. “The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: drawing [a] new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation,” state Sen. Ralph Hise, the Republican who prepared the map, told colleagues this week in a committee hearing. (NBC News)
Nicolas Sarkozy has become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars. (BBC)
People Pardoned by Trump Want Banks to Forgive Their Past, Too: It’s one thing to be cleared by the president. It’s another to be cleared by the bank. (Bloomberg)
Split itself in two or sell off? The parent company of CNN and TNT weighs its options. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
China has unleashed its most ambitious deep-sea exploration project with the Meng Xiang drilling vessel, a technological marvel weighing 42,600 tons and with the goal of breaking the world record for the deepest drill at nearly 7 miles. (Boston Organics)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Daria Trofimova on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!
It is sad that a young girl like Aerin has to learn about the ruthless nature of corporations like this. Thanks for another unique essay.
If you can’t win on your merits, gerrymander. And if someone else wins, block them from representing their constituents. Why are members of the house even being paid and still have insurance coverage?
“The House has not voted since Sept. 19, and Speaker Mike Johnson won’t call members back. He has refused to seat a new Democratic member from Arizona one month after her election victory.”
So will the Democrats then go back and redraw the map when they get a majority? There should be something bigger than a party-led legislature with the ability to redraw boundaries. And the White House? How sad that an egomaniac is allowed to destroy such a beautiful building with a long history. The new ballroom is sure to be some gaudy thing.
Never been a fan of Starbucks, find their coffee to be bitter and expensive. And I don’t feel the need to stand in line for 5 minutes just to get some froufrou drink that isn’t really even coffee.