Coffee Shop Gang Wars

Over the past 3 years that 6A has been in SOMA, the number of places to get your morning (and afternoon) coffee in the neighborhood has grown dramatically.  I'd say almost 1 million percent (thats a '1' followed by a million zeros).

However this growth is not without its growing pains.  There is now so much choice that local caffine addicts are now confused about where they should get their fix.  This has lead to skirmishes between rival coffee shops;  drive by espresso shots, coffee bags slashed and left, beans spilling onto the ground, intimidating messages left written in soy milk foam.

In order to help avoid being caught up in these power struggles and becoming a statistic, I've created the first map of local coffee shops and their territory:

Once you have your coffee cup in hand, you are then displaying your "colors".  You should avoid entering opposing coffee territories lest you make yourself a target and possibly a statistic.  Use this map to help guide you.

It took months of careful reconnaissance to gather this information; going undercover and meeting with inside sources, tailing high profile coffee workers, paying bums to hold different coffee cups in different locations to see if they get beat up.  Through this process some interesting information was found:

Starbucks: Why does Starbucks not have more territory?  Why fight over a few more blocks when the rest of the world is paved in green and white.

The Brickhouse:  Their territory doesn't actually go as far as their front door.  It doesn't matter much as they'll yell at you whether you're inside or out, holding their coffee or someone elses.

The Creamery vs. Philz: This is a recent development.  Within days of opening, The Creamery took over the Caltrain station.  Philz responded by throwing a brick through their window.  The Brickhouse responded by yelling at everyone.

Cafe Cento:  This coffee shop thrives on obscurity.  It holds all the alleyways in the block, its agents roaming around in tight pants and designer shirts pretending to talk about UI design and databases.  Its interesting to note that the size of Cento's customer base is inversely related to the size of its shop and the street its on.  The smaller and harder to get to the shop is, the more people want to go there.  If Cento had its way, the whole of SF would be a warren of tiny alleyways, each only one body wide.  Its customers would weave their way through the city like red blood cells in capillaries, pulled into Cento for caffine and then pushing out into the city to deliver this energy in the form of Web 2.0 proposals to far flung startups.

Orson: Orson is just happy to be around.

Peets: In a delicate balance with Whole Foods.  Too far from both Market St. and the Caltrain station, most potential customers drive by on the MUNI.  Those who are health concious will probably be drawn to Whole Foods, even though their coffee is not as good.  It is rumored that Peets next move is to sabotage the next truck that comes to clean out Whole Foods grease trap.

Cafe Centro: South Park is a tight community of turtle necks and small dogs.  Centro owns all of it, but nobody there ever leaves so its not much of an issue.

Blue Bottle: To far away to be a direct competitor to the near office battle grounds but controls everything in the market commerce and art area.  There's a few Starbucks in here, but they just help pull the wheat from the chaff; the weaker coffee drinkers who can't appreciate what a $10,000 machine can do for your coffee.