i remember koramangala, 5th block specifically, mid 2023. that blue tokai outlet next to roastery was ground zero. half of early stage bangalore was working from there. two pm to six pm you'd overhear: investor calls, pitch deck review, even product teardown with some YC alum. no seats inside so i parked at the outside bench near the window. wifi barely reached there. next to me this guy's debugging something on a steamdeck looking devkit. i half glance over and ask if it's AWS creds, he goes 'nah, it's some edge TPU , google keeps timing out cold starts'. we start chatting.
turns out he's building vision for offline-first retail. he's got no frontend, just a python backend. i scribble something on a napkin about fast-booting wasm modules from disk cache. 3 weeks later he pings me on telegram saying they got boot time down from 14s to 2.8s using a variant of that.
never met him again. never even learned his startup's name. but that entire bottleneck cleared because two people overheard a swear word near a bad socket.
we maynot recreate that on a discord channel. there's no incentive to overshare when you're not spatially co-located. bangalore 2023 worked because entropy was high and friction was low
> bangalore 2023 worked because entropy was high and friction was low
Go a whole decade+ back, it was the Leela coffee shop which opened till 1 AM.
> we maynot recreate that on a discord channel.
IRC + freenode did the same decades ago, back in the day when the computers wouldn't fit in a backpack - people would just lurk socially and not really join a channel for a purpose.
Most of #linux-india was a third place after midnight, though not a physical one.
> because two people overheard a swear word near a bad socket.
There's also an undesirable side to coworking cafe low-OPSEC.
Funny anecdote about that...
I was meeting up with a startups friend, at one of the cafes that's popular for techbros.
Before we met up, friend mentioned this guy from the startups scene, who sometimes lurks at that cafe, to steal ideas.
So friend and I are talking at the cafe about an application domain we both know. And how we're surprised no one is doing X for it, because then you could do A, B, C, etc.
I look over, and some guy has moved from his table, to sit on the floor, close to us, and just has a cat-that-got-the-canary beaming look on his face. Yes, it was the noted lurker-stealer guy.
Shortly after, an organization he's affiliated with announced a big initiative/group to do X for that application domain. Maybe just a funny coincidence.
Is the problem solved then? Is he making bank?
Ideas are useless without execution
Agreed about the importance of execution.
The anecdote is a funny way to raise awareness about OPSEC.
There's reasons that most companies don't air all their internal discussions and work publicly.
In a cafe, it can be easy to forget that.
And there really are people who actively exploit that.
Sounds like a missed opportunity for trolling. Discuss deliberately bad ideas openly while not admitting that is what you were doing. Imagine or watch the karmic suffering as they do something utterly idiotic like "kitty porn" of marketting footage of cats mating to cat owners who feel guilt about having their pets fixed.
I grew up ~20 minutes from the place you're describing, and you just made me very nostalgic :D
I miss blue tokai! So many fun memories and delicious cold coffees there
I'd be interested to see an update to this study in the coming years. Starbucks has been pivoting towards take out and mobile orders and removing tables and chairs entirely from some of its stores lately.
They had been!
But in 2024, Brian Niccols pitched the "Back to Starbucks" plan, with point 3 of his 4 point focus being, "Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse."[1] He said, "Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between “to-go” and “for-here” service."
Whether or not that's working is another story[2]. Long story short is that Scooters, Dutch Bros. and other brands are doing drive-thru better, and cafe attendance is down 22% since before the pandemic.
Consumer tastes have shifted. And given Gen Z's preference for online interaction over in-person, I'm not sure if Starbucks will be able to steer the ship.
If I were Starbucks, I'd strongly consider splitting the branding on the cafes and drive-thrus. Keep the Starbucks brand with the drive-thrus, then try opening a few new cafes as a new brand. Worst case scenario, you rebrand those cafes as Starbucks. I bet they've talked about it.
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/10/new-starbucks-ceo-brian-nicc... 2: https://intelligence.coffee/2025/05/back-to-starbucks-long-o...
There is definitely a split in coffeehouses. You see all the coffeehouses that have all the laptops open. (If maybe less active socializing.) And then you have the drive-through lines for lattes around the block. Not sure how you reconcile. Could block WiFi but then I imagine a lot of people would just use their phones. (Or skip.)
There maybe is an old European style of coffeehouses but nut sure that's been hit on beyond a very local level.
> "Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse."
What a load of corporate bullshit. Unlike any other community coffee house, this one made almost $10b in profit last year. I wonder how much the "community" really benefits from this.
We're literally commenting on a scholarly article that describes how the community benefits from Starbucks locations.
>Unlike any other community coffee house, this one made almost $10b in profit last year. I wonder how much the "community" really benefits from this
That's around $60k per store. That sounds like a very reasonable number for an absentee coffee shop owner (which is basically what the shareholders are).
When a company makes a profit, that doesn't necessarily mean they made anyone else worse off. In general, when in a competitive environment, and dealing with customers who are responsible adults (which both hold in the case of the restaurant industry), we should presume that everyone is being made better off by the transactions, that it's a win-win situation.
This pivot to takeout-focused stores could completely invert the study's findings, as the core mechanism of serendipitous encounters that drive entrepreneurship disappears when physical gathering spaces are eliminated.
I don't dispute that there may be a trend but a lot of Starbucks have long had pretty scanty seating--and certainly tables where you can reasonably meet and talk. And it can be fairly difficult to find a table at more traditional cafes/coffeeshops. So there's reasonable debate over whether a lot of coffeeshops are really third places.
> debate over whether a lot of coffeeshops are really third places
What are some examples of real third places in major US cities?
Probably not popular, but I like board game cafés. You pay an hourly fee to play one of dozens of board games while also enjoying food and drink typical of a coffee shop. I think the public library should be a great third place. They should have board games and computers in addition to books, but they're often unsatisfactory in terms of variety, cleanliness, or proximity.
The third places in the United States are almost exclusively churches and bars. It’s sort of gross.
As a teetotaling atheist, I moved to Berlin for the universities and night clubs, as there are tons of social events associated with both.
For a lot of parents it's their kid's sports team events. At my local pool there are people who RV camp and grill during swim team events and the parents hang out all day, play spikeball, read, gossip, chill and otherwise hang out together while the kids compete in all-day competitions.
Public Libraries.
I've been seeing more breweries focusing on catering to parents of young children too by building playsets or having more child-friendly areas.
If neighborhood entrepreneurs would benefit from seating, cities can require a minimum number of chairs per square foot, starting with a non-zero number to address US Starbucks locations that have removed all chairs.
Or they can just get rid of Euclidean zoning and allow people to create small commercial enterprises in their actual neighborhoods so actual neighbors can easily spend time there.
Mixed use zoning is quite common in major American cities. It's much more complicated to implement than Euclidean zoning, though, so I assume it faces some adoption challenges in smaller cities.
Turkish Starbucks and its local equivalents are usually open until 2am. Don't have an idea on the impact on entrepreneurship though.
Dublin has a big problem with 3rd spaces; no cafe is open for anywhere close to that, and we are all basically shoved to pubs..
I used to sit at cafes pretty late with a laptop — buying multiple ( >= 2 ) cups of coffee, often salads and sandwiches — in the countries I lived in, but there’s none of that in Ireland. Most non-chain cafes are not open past 17; and chains go on until 20.
British culture in general is pretty bad in this regard. Even in Central London, I find Leicester Square to be the only place that's a little alive at later hours. The pub culture, which I also like, might be to blame. If you start drinking at five on a work day it's pretty easy to call an early night. (there a lot of great third places if you stick to regular early hours, like the cafes of many of the museums.)
Germany I find even worse though. It's kind of ironic since they seem to have a more robust nightclubbing culture compared to the Brits.
Is it normal for people to be drinking coffee so late in the day?
It's certainly normal in the Middle East where coffee is a big part of the culture. In some countries, coffee kind of fills the gap where alcohol might normally where it's banned.
They may or may not be drinking coffee - but those places don't track if people are constantly buying something. They are generally young generation, doing maybe university work, chatting up etc. I guess it works well for the coffee shop as well, as more crowded they look, more people come in.
I for one haven't been to a Starbucks anywhere in the world that even tracks whether sitting customers have ordered anything. Is this a thing? Has anyone been to such a Starbucks?
Yes.
I’m pretty sure I would move to a city anywhere in the world based primarily on the availability of high quality 24 hour third places.
With an American-centric view, how do you deal with homeless people using them as shelter? Like, Korea/Japan have those cheap gaming booths, but that would never work in America because of the aforementioned issue. The want would be an exclusive third place that has the people you'd want to meet with.
> With an American-centric view, how do you deal with homeless people using them as shelter?
I don't think it's a concern, first of all. Second, store owners will kick out non-paying customers as they have since time immemorial. You might as well ask how someone deals with pan handlers at the intersection on the way to their drive-through Starbucks. If the person is just sitting in a corner not bothering anyone, maybe someone will buy them a coffee, or maybe they'll be annoyed that it's too loud and leave, or perhaps they just look homeless but they're just mistaken for your run of the mill startup founder?
There are also lots of homeless people in other parts of the world. How do people in Paris or London deal with them? I don't understand why this exists an American-centric view here for such a general concern. Homelessness isn't unique to the United States, yet virtually every country on the planet has coffee shops you can walk into.
It is a concern, clearly, the other commentor brought it up.
Kicking people out of anywhere, regardless of their housing status, is a relatively extreme conflict, compared to the normal happenings at a diner, cafe, or bar. Panhandlers aren't a good comparison because no one's trying to hang out at the intersection.
As to your question about the difference between America and Europe: If there even is much of a difference, I suspect it is influenced by socialized medicine and the significant differences in involuntary commitment[1]. In America you can be severely mentally ill, sleeping rough, and disruptive to the community, but unless you break a pretty serious law, no one can make you get help. And that's if you survive contact with the police.
Maybe in practice, it's not that different over there, but it seems like they have more tools and resources to handle mental health crises, which would lessen the rest of the population's assumption that unhoused = dangerous.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_by_coun...
I'm the person you responded to originally. The biggest issue is "kick out non-paying customers". Mechanisms exist to do so, but: 1. What if someone bought a coffee? You face potential litigation for discrimination. 2. Minimum wage employees shouldn't have to play the role of enforcers. A mentally-ill/drug-addled person can snap and cause a dangerous scene. Getting the cops involved is possible, but time-consuming and a pain. 3. It's America-centric because we don't have a social safety net for people. In the UK, for example, the NHS has avenues for people to get treated. The homeless you do run into tend to pose a much lower risk, anecdotally.
We do have coffee shops, but as others have pointed out, many are getting rid of seating. I think a membership route is the only way to enforce something more exclusive.
The US has a wealth inequality and affordability situation orders of magnitude worse than other countries, I can imagine it being very different across the world.
Third place doesn’t mean free. Churches and bars (the existing American third places) seem to have mechanisms for addressing this presently.
Some churches see providing shelter for the homeless as an outright feature instead of a bug to correct. Sadly they tend to face backlash from neighbors for this. I know of one pastor who had a rather sad career trajectory from trying to do the right thing in setting up a homeless shelter at a church. The whole negative reception she received for being the only one doing the right thing was downright sick.
I question how many people would want to hang in 24-hour third spaces beyond spaces that are open to some reasonably late evening hour.
Not many. But the existence of them in a place points towards a certain culture.
You see them not necessarily in places like wall street, but more in places with strong intellectual culture like universities and artsy neighborhoods.
I can use the existence of a country club as a useful signal about a place without being a member, or having any interest in it.
> points towards a certain culture
Also points towards local labor law and market.
Go to some clubs in Berlin sometime :)
Hell yeah same.
Where though?
West coast and Gulf Coast where Ive lived have very few.
Look near universities and in the weird/artsy neighborhoods.
Ktown in LA has a few
I've been to one out there but it was crowded as hell all hours of the night because theres so few late night coffee shops in LA.
1. This is actually a really cool idea for a website. Is this powered by NotebookLM or some such?
2. Coffee shops are probably my favorite Third Place in general. Here in northern Europe, I've heard of some attempts at Costco-like coffee shops where you pay a yearly membership fee, somewhere between $50-100, for the ability to purchase coffee from there, but the coffee itself is quite cheap. You can usually bring some number of friends or colleagues as well. I'd really like to see this model take off, if they can solve some of the adversarial concerns with it (e.g. it probably shouldn't become a replacement for a full time office, but regular 2-3 hour work sessions seem ideal).
Politely, on point 1 I disagree entirely. At a glance I thought it was a parking domain and closed it because I figured their site had crashed. Likely because the "Listen Now" looks exactly like a Google Advert and the jump in gradient for the other element.
I definitely agree but as a poor graduate student, this was the cheapest domain I could find.
Just clarifying for thread (pretty sure OP understands) it's not the domain name that's sketchy, it's the page style.
Hey, yeah, the site name is great, I'll never judge that. And even as design goes it's not "bad", it's just not as great as the parent comment originally implied.
I originally mistook the site as an ad-website because of how it's designed, which lead to me leaving. The neat part, is that's pretty easy for you to fix, so best of luck.
That sounds more like a design issue than an issue with the fundamental idea behind the website. 3 to 4 minute audio clips breezing over interesting new papers still seems near.
The link points to the original paper now (https://www.nber.org/papers/w32604) so this discussion isn't applicable going forward.
Yes, I had the same experience. OP should refresh the design
Thank you. I deeply value the feedback.
You can look for 'anti-cafes", where crackers and coffee is free but you pay for the time you're there, it was somewhat popular a few years back
I love coffee shops but don't like coffee very much, and they usually don't prioritize tea. Wish tea were more popular.
I really can't imagine how it could probably ever work. So one goes into Starbucks and start bugging other random people sitting there (with whatever topic, not just pushing their "elevator pitch" onto them)? If that happened people will start avoiding them just like they avoid places frequented by bums or beggars. No one wants that. People won't go where it is possible.
Or, the kind of people who are likely to create startups are drawn to cities that are big on coffee shop culture.
As usual the direction of causation is a bit difficult to tease out
At least in the US, SBUX was the primary 3rd place until they decided to remove themselves in lieu of drivethru and mobile orders... And removing chairs and tables.
To be fair, a proper 3rd place really can't be a company proper, since there's always the pressure of 'buy or leave'.
Even malls aren't sufficient, since many of them are incredibly hostile to under-18. I instead look at public libraries as the gold standard here.
It makes much more sense for cities to run the actual 3rd place, and businesses rent around the 3rd place. That way, coffee shops, restaurants, and the like can comingle as can the people.
Outside the USA, we see more of that in various areas. But folks here would likely howl socialism with a 3rd place run by the city. One can wish for better community, but alas.
Twenty five years ago, when I did Econ 101 I had it explained to me the theoretical underpinning for the fact that coffee shop chains are impossible
Does Starbucks even exist?
In SF? Not anywhere I've been though. Cafes I see are full of friends catching up, families or caffeine addicts.
Third places still exist, and if you go find them, you'll notice something: Most of the best ones aren't places of commerce. Not coffee shops, but clubs, churches, nonprofits, public parks, universities, apartment courtyards, volunteer fire departments, etc. I think that our modern society, based around cutthroat capitalist optimization where any "third space" is a lost opportunity to extract money from "consumers", is so far from the possibility of true "third spaces" that we can't even reason about them properly, no, not even the people who ostensibly study them academically.
> First, we compare census tracts that received a Starbucks to census tracts that expected a Starbucks but did not ultimately get one due to administrative issues such as city planning, zoning board rejection, architectural board rejection, or community mobilization. These ‘rejected’ Starbucks are a natural control group because Starbucks Corporation also sought to invest in those neighborhoods.
This is a terrible control group cuz it probably means that the cities that rejected starbucks have idiotic zoning and permit policies that impact entrepreneurship. Like SF, any restaurant that has over 7 locations requires special permitting and can be easily blocked.
Cafe hangout supremacy. The Yemeni coffee shops show the ideal model imo. Open late, lots of seating.
On the website / app this is using - it looks like a nice approach to consuming these papers, but I really wish they'd also provide the link to the original source paper. In an age where you can't trust anything anymore, being able to jump to the source material is really important.
Edit: This comment was made when the post pointed to an audio form of the main article. I'll leave it here none the less as feedback to the audio sites maker.
Original paper link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32604
I am sorry, I did not follow the guidelines so link was rightly removed. Here is the audioform link: https://thetreeoflife.cc/demo
You people already turned every coffee shop into a wework and now you want a "third space".
They’re usually called “third spaces” not third places. Otherwise you’d confuse them with bronze medal winners.
Like a church? A synagogue? A mosque? That fits the definition exactly. It seems like a substitute for a house of worship for people who do not believe in God.