America Before the Flood
Last Saturday I went and sat in Café Unwind. It is the new kid on the block when it comes to cafés in town and I would have gone into it over Christmas but for its original policy of not opening on Bank Holidays when there are a lot of people around in need of a coffee.
It is not a bad little café, one of those where people go for coffee and cakes and to watch how much it is raining outside. If you want a big fried breakfast and to be expected to leave as soon as you have finished eating then you want the Coast Café on the other side of the precinct.
If you keep going down the main road you will reach The Net Café. I have never been sure about The Net, you sit in the middle of raised tables and office chairs but minus computers on the tables. Is this an ironic tribute to 90s internet cafés or is it just that they have not been able to redecorate since they opened? This is more for baguettes and milkshakes than fried breakfasts.
Across the road used to be The G Shed. I rather loved The G Shed as they were originally called The Grazing Shed. Unfortunately a burger chain called The Grazing Shed started legal action and so they changed their name to The Grazin' Shed. In the end they became The G Shed but recently they seemed to have closed. I once went there with a friend from the Department of the Environment and we discussed the immense damage that the dairy industry does to the countryside over a milkshake.
Further into the square you have Café Velo. I have never actually eaten there as it is either empty and refusing to serve breakfast or so full that no orders can be taken. It is a bicycle-themed café or possibly some kind of quantum physics experiment.
Of course, if all these cafés are full you can walk down to the café at the beach, which I am very fond of, especially in winter when it is full of hardy walkers sheltering from the sea and social workers looking for a place to ask children what they 'really want from the situation'.
Why have I told you about all these cafés? I am waiting to see if you can spot something that is missing in this town. Where is the Costa? Where is the Starbucks or the Cafe Nerro? They are not here. All these cafés are one-off enterprises with their own distinctive menu and choices. The flapjacks at the beach café are packed full of sugar. They are not so much to die for as likely to kill you but they are made on site.
In fact, if you walk from one side of town to the other you start to notice something. Yes, there is a Spar, a Boots and a Co-op. A Greggs did open up not so long ago, but everything else is either a one-off enterprise or part of a very small chain. If you want a drink then pop in to the Old White Swan, part of a chain of three pubs owned locally. Filco is a supermarket founded in the town in 1948 and now expanded to eight branches in the county but that is not quite the same as an ASDA or a Sainsbury's.
It is quite remarkable really. I am often reminded of Mark Steel's question 'if capitalism is all about choice then why do all British High Streets look the same?'. The answer is that capitalism is not all about choice, it is about competition and they are two very different things.
When I used to play 'Railroad Tycoon II', I found that the best way to make a lot of money was to run a profitable railroad of your own, but also buy into the railroads run by other people. If a competitor starts doing well, build a rival railroad and try to poach his customers for any profitable times. While his company is trying to fight you off, launch a hostile takeover offering the shareholders enough money to put their greed over their loyalty. As soon as you have the company, close down all its routes and stations and sell off the trains. People are then forced to only use your company. Thank goodness it is only a game, eh?
Recently I visited Bournville and thought that the Cadbury's factory looked a rather sorry site. CadburyWorld was closed though hopefully only for that day. Local residents said that most of the chocolate production was done in Poland now and of course you will have followed how Cadbury's abandoned fairtrade chocolate as soon as they were bought by Kraft Foods. Locals were bitter about Kraft, saying that they had made all sorts of promises which were never kept. Still, Kraft made a quick profit selling on the company to Mondelez and let us be honest, who can complain when the profits are up?
I have read that Starbucks adopt a strategy of moving into a town by buying the most expensive shop location and then squeezing all the other coffee shops out of business. This may or may not be true, but the result is the wonderful line from a Johnathan Coulton song about suburban boredom, "I like the Starbucks here because it's better than the other one, 'cos the other one's not as good."
Capitalism is not about choice, why would it be? Your best profits do not come from fighting against competition, they come from monopolising the market. Competitors take customers away from you. Did anyone else see immediately what would happen when the UK government launched its helpline to tip off the Home Office about illegal restaurant workers? Want your rival closed down for the night? Phone in a tip with no foundation - no matter that nothing will come of it, the sight of the Home Office vans outside your rival will be enough of a publicity disaster to hurt their trade.
I am not going to be completely nostalgic for days gone by that never really existed and do not exist now. Filco are selling brands too and although I can buy Heritage or Independent chopped tomatoes, they have still been put in a can in a factory somewhere many miles away. However, there is still something rather calming about this little oasis of shops which are not just the same run of Wetherspoons, TESCO, WH Smiths (with Post Office counter), Waterstones, M &S, Clintons, Boots, Vodafone, charity shops. When I stepped off the train this week and saw that 'PCofMind' was open, I enjoyed going in for a chat while I bought a new mouse. The experience was somehow a lot more satisfying than any visit to PC World.
I think that these days are numbered. Advertisers have done well in rearing a generation who identify brands with success and personal achievement and do not see anything of value in buying non-branded goods. If you do not believe me, go to your nearest independent coffee shop. You may have a long walk to find it. There is nothing you can do to stop it, if people want the same coffee in every town that they go to, this is what will happen.
The makers of 'Railroad Tycoon II' were very concerned about climate change and there were all sorts of scenarios that you could play in the game where your coastal trains could be washed away by rising sea levels. One of the levels was called 'America Before the Flood'. Sometimes I think that I live in the UK before the flood. The flood will reach here too one day, but I will enjoy things before it does.