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 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | March 2008 
Coffee, but Hold the Wi-Fi and Valet Parking
 Oscar Avila - Chicago Tribune
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| | El Jarocho, a Mexico City coffee shop, is trying to weather the growth of Starbucks. (Tribune/Oscar Avila) | | |
Mexico City - With Starbucks expanding worldwide as if by some caffeinated manifest destiny, traditional Mexican coffee drinkers are making a last stand in a beloved chain of shops with no wi-fi, no pumpkin latte and no Tony Bennett on the stereo.
El Jarocho, a fixture along the cobblestone streets of the Coyoacan neighborhood since 1953, is everything that Starbucks isn't. The open-air shops have no tables so customers spill out onto benches lining sidewalks bustling with vendors.
Want to use your laptop? Use your lap.
The setup forces intimacy and conversation, unlike the Starbucks patrons in Mexico and elsewhere who shut the world out with their IPod ear buds.
Not that Starbucks is foundering. Reuters reported last month that, since entering Mexico in 2002, the company's expansion rate has increased sevenfold. In fact, Starbucks plans to open 80 new stores in Mexico this year.
For Mexico's trendy and monied set, Starbucks has become a status symbol of indulging in American tastes. The Starbucks a few blocks from El Jarocho's main shop, one of three of the American outlets on a mile-long stretch in Coyoacan, could easily be in a Schaumburg strip mall.
They even have valet parking.
El Jarocho (pronounced ha-RO-cho) is defiantly old-school. They sell their industrial-strength coffee (about half the price of a serving at Starbucks) in paper cups with vintage pictures of their bohemian neighborhood, where Frida Kahlo lived. The food offerings center on greasy tortas (a Mexican sandwich) in plastic wrapping paper.
No interior designers helped with the dιcor. Customers dodge a pile of 150-pound bags filled with coffee beans to get to the counter. No Frank Sinatra CDs are played, or sold, at the counter. The dominant sound is the whir of coffee grinders for the next orders.
Their patrons, generally an older group, are loyal. Even at midnight, customers must jockey for a spot in line.
Business seems to be booming at both Starbucks and El Jarocho (named for a slang word for something from Veracruz). It helps that the folks from Starbucks have stayed on the neighborhood's margins and not yet dared to invade El Jarocho's real home turf.
El Jarocho is ready if they do. On the wall are several enlarged copies of a newspaper article about the coffee wars with a phrase added by staff members: "The customer has the last word."
The message to Starbucks is clear. Bring it on.
But a strange thing happened Wednesday. Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz announced sweeping changes, including real coffee grinders small enough to let clients see their baristas, in an attempt to boost sales.
He said Starbucks needed to become a little more intimate, a little less corporate...
...and a little more like El Jarocho? |
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