Deciphering the jargon of the Starbucks "Third Place"
Is it an important space or just a collection of meaningless buzzwords?
Is the way a take-out coffee giant refers to its retail spaces a meaningful term? Or is it just corporate jargon.
At The Cost of Living, we answer questions like this through our Jargon of the Week segment.
First up — Starbucks.
In a press release, Starbucks just unveiled a new concept, Starbucks Pickup.
It's a futuristic new store in Toronto that has no tables, no chairs — it's really just a pickup window with a screen.
The company called it "the first piece of the company vision to re-imagine the 'third place'."
But what is this third place that Starbucks refers to, and is it really anything new?
Update: origin of terminology
Since the original broadcast of this story, Cost of Living has learned:
- The "third place" is a concept originally explained by American sociologist Ray Oldenberg.
- In his 1989 book, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Oldenberg defines third places as informal gathering sites where people gather between home and work.
Click "listen" above to hear the segment, or download the Cost of Living podcast.