If you make your living selling coffee, breads and pastries the sight of a Starbucks Coffee shop popping up in your neighborhood could get the blood flowing faster than a double espresso ever could.
Such is not the case, however, in the quaint shopping area of Wayland Square on Providence’s East Side, where Starbucks is building its fifth Rhode Island store just a couple miles down the street from its first on Thayer Street.
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Instead of fearing the Seattle-based company, competitors see them as a means of drawing attention and potential customers to Wayland Square. The merchants on the square, a hodge podge of mostly owner-run stores, said Starbucks will be an important ingredient for making the area’s customer base more diverse.
”Starbucks will bring more people into the area and give all our businesses more exposure,” said Beverly McKenzie, manager of the Daily Bread on Wayland Avenue. Like several businesses that will compete with Starbucks, the Daily Bread manager believes they will maintain their success by simply continuing to do what they have always done.
”All of our products are fresh and made daily, which I don’t believe all of theirs are. Because of our high quality we have a local following and we plan on keeping it,” McKenzie added.
The 50-plus businesses around Wayland Square are banking on gaining more younger customers who would not normally go to the neighborhood.
Wayland Square Merchants Association President Sarah Zacks, also the owner of Books on the Square, said the majority of businesses composing the association like the idea of Starbucks, even though some owners needed convincing.
”I lobbied this summer to help persuade the neighborhood association that this is good for all of us,” Zacks said.
She added that Starbucks’ move to Wayland Square – at Angell Street and Elmgrove Avenue — falls in line with the association’s attempts in recent years to draw more people to the area. Street signs offering directions to Wayland Square, billboards advertising the center and aesthetic improvements have all been employed.
”This is the heart of the East Side. The three-mile radius surrounding us is the most affluent neighborhood in the state and the most highly educated. I’m very enthusiastic about what the square has to offer,” she added.
Starbucks is also excited about what the location has to offer. The company sees it as a chance to tap into a new market on the East Side.
”On Thayer Street, where there is not a lot of parking, we tend to have a local crowd (associated with the colleges),” said Donna Peterson, Starbucks marketing manager for New England, who expects the Wayland location to open no later than July.
The new location will have 15 parking spaces to accommodate customers who do not want the hassle of finding a space on Thayer Street. It was with that in mind that Starbucks decided to build another store so close to an existing store, said Peterson. It was not done to saturate the market, she added.
”People like to say we are opening everywhere, but it’s just not true,” Peterson said, noting that Starbucks stores make up a fraction of the number of Dunkin’ Donuts in the state.
The Starbucks locations in Rhode Island are located at: Thayer Street, the Barrington Shopping Center, the Village of Garden City in Cranston and Bald Hill Commons in Warwick. The company, which has 76 locations in New England and 2,000 nationally, doesn’t have any immediate plans for another store aside from Wayland Square’s in Rhode Island, Peterson said.
She added that the company does not force itself on customers, but instead finds areas where there are Starbucks fans.
”We base the decision on customer demand. Many times people come to us and say that they want Starbucks here or there. We don’t say we need a certain amount of stores in a particular area,” she said.
Using “a direct response list” collected from catalog or Internet orders of Starbucks’ products, the company looks for an area of dense concentrations of Starbucks customers or as one Wayland Square described them: the yuppies.
”They have a much different clientele than we have,” said Tom Aissis, owner of the Deli on the Square. “Starbucks caters to more of a yuppie, younger crowd.”
Aissis said he is not worried about Starbucks stealing customers. While the two businesses will compete for coffee sales, the deli has a full breakfast and lunch menu.
Aissis said what he really likes is the land that Starbucks will occupy will finally be used.
”It will be better than looking at an empty lot. We have been staring at that for the last 18 years. I think (visually) it will improve the neighborhood,” he added.
Business people have been speculating for years about what would happen to the land, which has been vacant for 50 years. The property is owned by Stephen Lewinstein, a real estate developer whose properties include several Wayland Square commercial buildings as well as apartment buildings.
Lewinstein said, “I really wanted to integrate the stores and apartments. You need stores to service your tenants. You need tenants to buy from your stores.”
Lewinstein said it was an easy sell to Starbucks, which loved the “boutique, upscale neighborhood.”
As part of the construction of the coffee house, Lewinstein will build a 48-space parking lot behind the shop that will be used for residents of the apartment building at 490 Angell Street, which he owns.
Also, street parking on Angell Street will be shifted from the north side of the street to the south side, making it easier for customers of the square’s businesses to exit their cars because the driver’s side will be to the sidewalk.
Lewinstein believes Starbucks will have a direct impact on other companies that are considering moving to the neighborhood in the future.
”It serves to validate the area. A company like Starbucks does a tremendous amount of home work: looking at shopping tendency and purchasing power. Other companies will say if Starbucks is going in there we should really consider going in there,” he said.
Zacks of Books on the Square said she doesn’t necessarily want more chains to move in though. Starbucks would make the third chain, along with CVS and Subway, which is more than enough, she said.
”I would like to see it remain the way it is. Most every business is unique. For example, clothes stores are very individual rather than let’s say the GAP or other homogenized chain,” she said. “All of our owner-operated stores are what make us unique and special.”
