08/18/2006 11:14:00 PM 
So here goes.
Starbucks owes its success to being a "Third Place"; a place between home and the office.
What should that place be like now-15 years on?
How can Starbucks make its places more relevant?
Answers to sdrake@bssp.com
The winners get free passes to our M-Squared conference on October 3rd.
Some of our crappy thoughts-the starting point
One of the keys to Starbucks success has been in its ability to attract the freelance worker and to get them to rely on their stores as virtual offices.
This phenomenon is nothing new and has been present since the inception of the brand. However, aside from allowing these workers to spend their time in the stores and charging for Wi-Fi access, Starbucks has done little to enhance the experience from the work perspective.
This has opened the field up to others like Australia's Bureaux who has deconstructed the office into its component parts and allow you to rent everything from workstations to conference rooms and they also have a cafe.
Perhaps Starbucks should take a long hard look at their locations and start tailoring them more specifically to the audience.
So instead of the stores being Starbucks take on the neighborhood, driven solely by design and art direction, instead, should the stores be more functional and designed to meet the real needs of their core audiences.
It appears that they might be starting to think this way. They recently announced the Starbucks Salon, a pop-up art and music fest that's taking place from September 8th to 17th at one of their locations in Soho, NYC. They also did something similar at Sundance this year.
If Starbucks doesn't seize these opportunities, others like the Bureaux will.
Bureaux information thanks to Springwise
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