How Blank Street is Blanding NYC
A sinister infestation
is creeping into the crannies of New York, and few have noticed the beautiful, yet deadly proliferation. You may think I am referring to the lanternflies — those bastards already have a war waged against them. I am referring, in fact, to Blank Street Coffee. On the face of it, coffee shops are much less invasive. They are perfect tools for romanticizing city life and scenting the early morning streets. But when the fourth Blank Street spawned in my ten-block radius, complete with a mural on the side that interrogates, “HAVE YOU HAD COFFEE YET?,” I knew that, like lanternflies, beautiful things must die.
The aesthetic of Blank Street is the kind of branding crack that startups love these days — creamy menthol green with retro lettering and chrome finishes. If nostalgia can be manufactured, Blank Street is building the factory. Their matcha and oat milk may even double as spray paint. But Blank Street is not a brand, it’s a bland. Ben Schott, Bloomberg’s branding guru, defines blands as follows:
What makes a brand a bland is duality: claiming simultaneously to be unique in product, groundbreaking in purpose, and singular in delivery, while slavishly obeying an identikit formula of business model, look and feel, and tone of voice.
Blank Street certainly lives up to this definition. In a now-deleted Medium article, the Blank Street founders wrote it was “On a Mission to Become the Most Sustainable Coffee Brand on the Planet.” At one point, they must have believed that. But now, after receiving $67 million in venture capital from other notorious bland-makers (Dave Gilboa of Warby Parker, Jeff Raider of Harry’s, Joey Zwillinger of Allbirds), they can no longer afford to avoid blitzscaling their way to success, whatever the environmental and social fallout. While Blank Street positions itself as an affordable luxury, others would coin it premium mediocre. Eater New York christened Blank Street’s aesthetic as “the chilling feeling of sterile modernism.”
Did they name it Blank Street because their locations reflect the idiosyncrasies of any street, from Carroll to MacDougal? Or is it that their stores occupy previously blank space in cityscapes and convert it into efficient enterprise? The former option conveys prideful naivete in believing that venture-backed, homogenous storefronts could easily assimilate the charm of historic neighborhoods. And the latter assumes that all blank space within cities must be filled, as if NYC wasn’t hectic enough. By trying to fit in everywhere, Blank Street inevitably fits in nowhere.
To differentiate themselves from the mass of coffee shops that already exist in New York, Blank Street has crafted a competitive moat from three value propositions:
Firstly, a micro-footprint. They have optimized their stores to live entirely in battery-powered, zero-emission vending carts and small-format shops.
Secondly, they are cheap — an iced latte at Blank Street costs $4.25, while competitors Starbucks and Blue Bottle average $5.65. Their price point comes from using automated espresso machines.
Thirdly, Blank Street champions local business. They use Brooklyn-based Parlor Coffee and sell King David Tacos, and hope to keep building out their repertoire.
These differentiators all have their pitfalls. A micro-footprint leaves no room for conversing or lounging, for a ‘Third Place’ that has little financial barrier to entry. Airmail writer Jensen Davis notes that “the biggest store can fit a line of just four customers.” Where will aspiring writers go? The remote workers pining for human presence? Even the tourists, excited for their first cup of NYC joe, must dawdle halfheartedly on the sidewalk.
Blank Street’s price point and mobile application puts them squarely in the commuter category — those who value convenience and cost. These consumers may have gone to their local bodegas or favorite barista, but after an app download and three free drinks from Blank Street, they will develop a switching barrier, unable to escape routine.
Blank Street’s profitability dangles precariously with each store opening, a Neumannesque expansion that could end up being either the next Netflix limited series or predatory pricing lawsuit. Blank Street pays employees $23–28 per hour, without even training them to make espresso by hand. The high costs of unskilled labor and aggressive multiplication could lead to prices being jacked up — but only after the competition has bit the dust.
And their ‘local partnerships’ have been a slate of clout-chasing popups, executed in tandem with Kendall Jenner-backed tequila brand 818 and sunscreen brand Supergoop. So Blank Street’s only real differentiator becomes its ability to scale tremendously and underprice competition using venture capital. Starbucks can survive a VC hit, but can Nathan’s Coffee Cart? What about that Puerto Rican farm-to-cup joint on 7th? As a company that claims to be the next hyperlocal marketplace, their strategy consumes rather than uplifts.
This may come as a surprise, considering that the founders of Blank Street are immigrants themselves — Dubai and London-bred, NYU and Columbia-cultivated. Grub Street writes that while part of the goal for Blank Street is to help immigrant street vendors thrive, “How it all might work is yet to be determined.” Their expansion of 100 Blank Street locations by the end of 2022 is drawn out with microscopic precision, but their supposed focus on impact and sustainability is painted with crude brushstrokes.
In the future, Blank Streets could accompany a wave of blands that zealously feed on the cultures and communities of New York City, replacing them with the Pantone color of the day and some quirky neon. We may one day stop by for a coffee at Blank Street, followed by a stroll around Blank Park while eating our favorite Blank cookies. My only ask is that we squash Blank Street out now, before it becomes inevitable.
