soapbox

The drive-up coffee shack. Maybe they exist places other than the Seattle area, but I haven’t seen them. It’s a pretty simple construction, a small building maybe 4′ by 8′, a sliding window at the right height for a F350 truck, a small door for the barista to get in and out, and not much else. Typically, they’re in the parking lot of a gas station so if nature calls the barista can always close things down and just run into the station’s bathroom. There are fancier ones made of cinderblock or with little indoor areas for customers, but the basic recipe is the same and they are EVERYWHERE!

Due to the small footprint, the location has got to cost very little and a barista makes ~$10/hr so you really don’t need to sell very many lattes an hour to make these things a going concern, maybe only five.

So, why is this dubious?

Well… you get the sense that there’s a marketing arms race going on. You can’t lower prices, how how do you differentiate your hut from the one a quarter of a mile down the road? The answer, like everything in marketing, is sex appeal. I have to assume that when the huts started, one advertised “hottest barista around” and hired some UW student. Then came the bikini coffee huts. It’s a slippery slope though limited only by public decency regulations. Up the street now there are three huts that have “lingerie baristas”. And pasties on MWF. What’s next? Peep baristas?

I’m actually very curious about the whole thing. Who is the target demographic? Is the coffee noticeably better or worse than say, a Starbucks? Does having a hot girl increase sales more than a slightly fancier hut would?