Smell Your Own Coffee, Brazil!
By Kim Heung-sook
I have never been to Brazil except for a brief transit, but I like her for what she offers, particularly coffee and samba. The annual samba carnival draws thousands of people from around the world to Rio de Janeiro; coffee affects more men and women all the year around, quickening their heartbeats with no sweat.
Being not much of a dancer, I enjoy Brazilian coffee better than samba and that is why I felt a certain mixture of sadness and anger when I read an AFP report last week.
It said that rich Brazilians were flocking to Starbucks cafes where a cup of coffee is sold at three times higher the price than that of their Brazilian counterparts. Starbucks opened its seventh store in Sao Paulo in October and a few others are already on the way.
In Korea, the franchise probably has been the fastest expanding imported establishment after protestant Christianity, which recorded a nearly 700-fold increase of believers during the 20th century.
Starbucks debuted here in 1999 and the 200th store recently opened in the neighborhood of Itaewon in Seoul. Korea is the sixth largest haven of Starbucks stores in the world now and will see its 300th store opening within three years. Breathtaking as they are, these records are nothing to be proud of for a Korean.
I feel ashamed as I hope Brazil won't follow the Korean example, while watching the franchise fad in my own land. Still, I wish to hear a Starbucks setback in Brazil, not because I'm a schadenfreude who rejoices at others' misfortunes, but because its success may signal erosion of the Brazilian culture and psyche.
As AFP reporter Marc Burleigh mentioned in his article, one important element underlying Starbucks' remarkable achievement is the ``snob value" of the brand, which some observers believe overrides the quality of coffee and its variations on sale.
In Seoul, many young people read or write or pretend to do so from the window side seats of Starbucks stores or move about streets and campuses, holding takeout cappuccinos in cardboard cups with the Starbucks logo. No one can deny that at least some of them are trying to follow a ``chic" trend they have seen in American dramas and movies.
Starbucks claims its cafes provide a ``third-place" atmosphere, a comma between work and home. Perhaps, that's what they do in New York. Here, however, the cafes' function goes well beyond stopovers, offering the regulars the feeling of being free from societal obligations.
Unlike the traditional coffee shops where the proprietors and customers often develop a certain level of intimacy, these new cafes are far more individualistic and guests are left alone for as long as they want.
For some Koreans, who find reality too frustrating, Starbucks and mushrooming cafes of its kind provide shelters where they can momentarily forget their situation. So, when they buy a cup of caramel macchiato for as much as $4-5, they are paying for both the high caffeine coffee and the short living fantasy of a carefree life.
Judging from Burleigh's report, Starbucks seems to lure a different patronage in Brazil. He said that moneyed Brazilians saw the Starbucks cafes almost as exclusive clubs for them, as ``displays of wealth are usually an invitation to being mugged" there. The photograph of a uniformed guard at the entrance of a Starbucks cafe backs up the report.
Like Korea, Brazil has apparently failed to bring balanced benefits of its economic accomplishment to its population, widening the chasm between the rich and the poor, and subjecting the wealthy to fears of muggings and other forms of violence.
It should be troublesome and tiresome to live in insecure surroundings with a lot of money, but overspending sojourns into foreign shelters won't solve the problem.
I hope the rich in Brazil will sip their own home roasted coffee in their old neighborhood cafes. Then they may come to their senses and realize that the best way to be safe is to spend their money on respectable causes.
They may also remember what President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said: ``When the Americans come over here, we always have to hide the money."