There are 15 people at best getting coffee in that first image
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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lol exactly what I thought
There's only one (maybe two) actually geting served...
That's more like 10 people on the first image
I was gonna say, these people moat likely dirve by themselves. And probably live less than a km away
Eh, don't be too sure about only living a km away. I know growing up the nearest grocery store was about 12 km away. The nearest place to get coffee was further away.
Fast forward to today the nearest grocery store is only 1.5 km away, but there's no sidewalk and the road is so narrow that you can't walk on the shoulder. You could ride a bike, but there's no bike lane so you'll be hoping the whole way that no one runs you over.
The car issue is a lot more complex than "American Lazy LOL" it's an infrastructure issue that was set in to effect almost 50 years before I was born. Designed to serve the car manufacturers and to sell cars.
And to keep out icky poor people and brown people from suburban neighborhoods. Don’t forget that part. In fact that was a large part of why the car manufacturers were able to have infrastructure built this way.
Don't forget forcing sprawl by blocking apartments and denser urban cores through local building codes. Decentralization/sprawl was forced for any new housing to be built
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And it's 15 in the second
I counted 18, but that's only outside
I thought about that but then one could argue that maybe the Starbucks is full of pedestrians, too
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The average Starbucks does not have a throughput that should legally allow them to have a drive though.
It takes like 5 minutes per car and one near me used to regularly back up on to the road and block the adjacent parking lot.
It just doesn’t make sense to go to the start bucks drive through ever, so I don’t know who is foolish enough to form these lines.
Notwithstanding that Starbucks is an awful corporation with either subpar coffee or comparable sugar levels to ice cream.
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My main takeaway here is that people drinking Starbucks are not enjoying their coffee
My main takeaway is that the people in the top image are overworked and rushed and the people in the second image are more relaxed and less stressed.
Mine is that drive-through is a huge mistake and should not be allowed anywhere.
Drive thru coffee shops should be illegal.
Road adjacent coffee stands without seating are probably the most common business here in vietnam, it works because its only for pedestrians, bicycles, and motorbikes, I've never seen a car stopped at one, blocking traffic.
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I live in a country where drive through isn't that common. But when a huge local e-shop introduced pickup by drive through, I decided to try it out. I tried it twice. First time it was relatively empty so I though "Hah, that's actually pretty convinient and fast". Second time it was pretty packed and I thought "Omg this must be the stupidest idea ever. What am I doing here? I'm sitting in an artificial traffic jam which I literally can't leave while employees handle a fraction of customers at once. And why exactly? So I don't leave my car?"
Yeah I for sure have time to sit down and drink a coffee at a cafe before work...
sure you do. in the car. on the freeway. it is your 'cafe'. breakfast and coffee in your mobile 'cafe' as you move your vehicle forward two car lengths every five minutes for an hour.
I get my coffee when I get to work and drink it while loading trucks.
One unstated thing that helps create conditions for the above:
The people above pictured don't have robust unions and labor laws that save you from being annihilated for being ~~late~~ not early enough one time.
What's that area surrounding the cafe called?
Streets, or in America, stroads.
A crossroads. It's where the Rue Saint-Honoré meets the Rue de Valois... And I can imagine it's a pretty nice place to grab a coffee because you can people-watch passersby, which is my favourite thing to do while drinking coffee. Tho the coffee is probably ridiculously overpriced so near the Louvre.
Hopefully, we'll see more and more street reclamation, with cars pushed to parking lots and downtown streets reserved for walking, bicycling, and the occasional small electric vehicle for those who need them. Local laws need to change, so we all need to vote in local elections. Voter turnout for local elections is abysmal in most cities and towns.
We used to have places like Der Wienerschnitzel and Taco Bell with tables outside, but you still had to drive there and park. I don't know if new places are built like this anymore, probably not many. The last gasp of this sort of thing in America.
That wienerschnitzel looks so similar to a hamburger stand/wienerschnitzel down the street from me. I'm honestly convinced it's an old photo of it
Does Europe have the bikini barista stands like we have out here? Those are Starbucks biggest competition.
Well, that and unions.
USA vs the world.
?
Surely the bottom picture should be an Italian piazza. French coffee culture is not much to write home about (they lean towards robusta rather than arabica, as that’s what their colonies grew) and the coffee you get in a pretty café in the touristy parts of Paris is going to be mediocre at best.
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Not fair. 'Murrican Super Size Drive-in versus European Coffee House. The first can never win this game.
As soon as you land.... leaving the imperial core.... it is ssoooooo much better.
In all fairness, Starbucks in Europe even in more car centric countries are a lot more like the bottom one.
I don't think I've ever seen a drive-in to get coffee around these parts, and I've lived in several European countries.
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You are making a point, just not the one you intended to make. The first coffee shop is selling to people who want a nice place to slowly enjoy their cup of coffee. The second coffee shop is targeting commuters who want to grab a coffee to drink while they are driving into work.
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