Doomed Starbucks killing their coffee buzz

Photo credit: Urbanite

Avi Dayan enjoys coffee at the Starbucks at 565 Fifth Ave., which is closing. [MORE PHOTOS] (RJ Mickelson/amNY)

Avi Dayan is a man wronged.

His Starbucks, at 565 Fifth Ave., is among 11 in the city targeted for closure by the overextended coffee-shop chain.

“It’s not right,” he says. Dayan works nearby, comes down “two, three times a day” and knows the people who work there. He asks if there is anything that can be done to save it, and finds no relief in the fact that the Starbucks on the other side of the block at 575 Fifth Ave. has been spared.

With a Starbucks practically everywhere, it’s hard to imagine that people are attached to any of them, but customer loyalty runs deep. So when the company announced it was closing more than 600 locations nationwide, it was more than just an inconvenience for some people.Another regular at that doomed Starbucks, Professor Joe Omokwe, doesn’t see the logic of the decision. “It’s irrational,” he says.

The CUNY professor also works at the Ghanese consulate on East 47th Street. He carries a book of Greek letters, but soon he won’t be able to read at his usual spot, the 565 Fifth Ave. Starbucks, around the corner from the consulate. The shop at 575 has no room for reading.

That won’t be a problem for Sandy Yadad. He was sitting comfortably the other night at a Starbucks at East 36th Street and Madison Avenue, just before closing time.

“I am very happy,” he says of the survival of his Starbucks.

Yadad is here twice a week. He studies at the Science Business Industry Library nearby, but sometimes he comes from his home in Jersey City just to work in this well-lighted Starbucks.

“I like the employees. I like the incredible playlist of music. I like the fact that I can sit here quietly and do my work,” Yadad says as Bob Dylan plays in the background

It may seem like random forces at work, leading Omokwe and Dayan to shuffle along while leaving Yadad’s routine unhindered.

Only the “executive and field leadership teams” know the corporate calculus that spared 575 Fifth Ave. but not 565. On the surface, 565 is superior — more tables and better air conditioning. But Starbucks writes in an e-mail that the “teams used several criteria to identify stores for closure” among them terms like “market conditions” and “profitability.”

A barista at the spared Starbucks at 575 Fifth Ave. agrees, saying there’s more to it than chance. He seems to have faith in the guiding hand of corporate governance.

“There’s a bigger plan at work,” he says.

-- Garett Sloane

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