MARTU LAND, Australia. There are more than 500 distinct aboriginal peoples in Australia, each with their own language and culture, and each with a traditional territory that is both their spiritual home and critical to their survival.
“Where will I go for overpriced coffee and snotty counter help?”
“Land is very important to the aborigines,” says Phyllis Rath-Burton, executive director of Aborigines International, a group that seeks to save indigenous peoples from encroachment by development. “And I don’t mean that in the sense of a bunch of suburbanites talking about the value of their second homes at a cocktail party.”
“No way are you taking away my caramel macchiato!”
So when word leaked out that 379 Starbucks stores would be closed in 2018, a corporate cost-cutting move designed to reverse losses due to too-rapid expansion, Rath-Burton mobilized her colleagues and heads of other charitable organizations to put pressure on the Seattle-based coffee giant to keep those in the outback open. “Starbucks has a responsibility to these indigenous peoples,” she says. “They introduced them to the ‘third place’ besides home and work where you can buy a cup of overpriced coffee and listen to Norah Jones all day.”
“Is it my fault you over-expanded?”
With a large contribution from an anonymous donor whose initials are “Bill Gates,” the group chartered a plane and headed to the Pacific Northwest to persuade Starbucks to shift a greater share of the burden of the store closings to affluent East Coast communities such as Ridgewood, New Jersey, and Newton, Massachusetts, pitting upscale, college-educated patrons against men and women whose diet had not changed substantially since the Stone Age, except for the addition of Diet Coke.
“The next Starbucks is over by that dingaroo.”
At the peak of its success, Starbucks sought to have outlets strung across this continent no more than a boomerangs’ throw apart, but food industry analysts say that expansion cut down on same-store sales. “Eventually, you begin to cannibalize your baked goods and ‘Bearista’ stuffed animals,” says Will Pearson of the Knight-Coughlin consulting firm. “Once that starts, there’s some risk that your customers will eat each other if their Starbucks Breakfast Sandwiches aren’t produced fast enough.”
“I asked for extra foam, dammit!”
For Gattjil Yirrkala, a Yolngu Wangurri tribesman, the loss of his local Starbucks in Nhulynbuy, East Arnhem Land, would be “devastating,” he says through a translator. “People in America can go to Peet’s or Dunkin’ Donuts,” he says, his brow furrowed with obvious concern. “I go to Starbucks with my laptop and pretend I’m writing a novel, which is a great conversation starter with chicks.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Let’s Get Primitive.”