Are coffee shops just the answer to having social spaces that aren't alcohol fueled like bars and clubs? For quite a while I have had a rough idea that there could be something along the lines of a bar but with no alcohol and some kind of structured activities for breaking the ice.
>The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.
Yes, coffee bars were popular back in the 1990s. One of my CS professors opened one up. In "Friends," they often go to a coffee bar. They had couches and comfy chairs to chill in. You just went there and had coffee and hung out. These were mom and pop shops and probably all got eaten up by corporate behemoths like Starbucks.
Just goes to show, when a company goes public, you are no longer the customer, the shareholders are.
I think that depends on the means of going private. Original owners get together to take their baby back? Probably going to go well. Private equity firm swoops in to extract $$$? Probably going to crash and burn.
Yes I should have said, "has outside investors," or "institutional investors." It would have fit better. PE companies seem even worse. I often see them take a known brand, cut quality, jack up the prices and bleed the company dry.
Don't forget the evil university endowments flying under the radar of non-profits. They destroy local shops & economy by replacing them with either for profit corporate tenants who can pay exuberant rents, or worse, empty, abandoned, desolate buildings with exuberant mark-to-model real estate values.
Harvard and Kendall Squares in Cambridge, MA are the best examples of what ruthless endowments do. Kendall Square is entirely owned by MIT and is new shiny and totally unaffordable to non-VC/PE crowd and shuts down after dark.
Harvard Square is replete with empty buildings worth billions on HMC's books. The late night 2-story Starbucks with lots of seating and occasional live music is gone and replaced with a tiny one with no seating which closes at 9pm.
