For a while now we’ve had fun watching companies incorporate the shipping container trend into their marketing and publicity campaigns.  The trend started as a way to up-cycle these metal boxes as many of them are only being used once and then discarded.  The latest to jump on board is Starbucks.  On December 13th they opened a store in Tukwila, Washington built with four recycled shipping containers.  This new drive-through location is the first of it’s kind and is extremely eco-friendly (ask them about their rainwater harvesting).  The hope is to place these portable stores in underdeveloped city locations - for example a vacant lot.  As the city becomes gentrified and land is more valuable, Starbucks will easily be able to up and move these portable stores to a new destination.

Our favorite local bathroom is going global. Starbucks has stripped the text for their new logo and changed the interior design from it’s jazzy brown coffee house vibe to an older simpler form that brings with it a local aroma from the prevailing winds of Americana. Starbucks is a smart company so I began to look deeper into this trend. I am calling this new old-new thing coming back to our neighborhoods, “LoCo.” So, get ready to pay cash, suspend your trousers, and wax that mustache, LoCo is crazy and business is roaring.  If you are thinking of starting a new restaurant, coffee shop, bar or boutique consider going LoCo, just like when everything below Houston went SoHo.

Go to a time when there was a butcher, a baker, a man who sharpened your knives from his truck, or a local speakeasy, many neighborhoods, like Carrol Gardens in Brooklyn, were the home to working families who also owned businesses in the area in which they lived in. Over hundred years later the sentiment is big. Businesses like Peter Luger’s steak house in Williamsburg or Caputo’s Bread shop in Carrol Gardens, which have actually been around for 100 years, offer a perfect aesthetic model for anyone who has a mint julep on their menu.

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