But this is Chico, too

How many Starbucks does Chico need? We already have eight and two more will soon be opening. I’m wondering when this town is going to wise up and stop giving them so much business. We’ve got such great homegrown alternatives. We certainly don’t need any more Starbucks, and I think we could manage fine if there were fewer of them.

I can understand Starbucks’ success in the suburbs — all of them home to the same two dozen businesses — but its penetration into the urban core of America surprises me. San Francisco has had a thriving coffeehouse culture for decades and its residents have an aversion to chains, yet no less than 78 Starbucks have set up shop in The City, according to the company’s Web site.

I recently talked to Tim Hamor, owner of Café Mondo, one of my regular haunts. He said his coffeehouse has held its own against a Starbucks that opened about a year ago just up the street. He said he’s experienced an increase in the number of Chico customers, but a downswing in the number of Chico State University students. He said students seek out Starbucks because they are accustomed to seeing them in their hometowns and because many of them get pre-paid gift cards to Starbucks from relatives.

Students should consider excursions to places like Café Mondo, Augie’s Fine Coffee & Tea, Coco Caffe, Has Beans, The Naked Lounge, Café Flo, Café Paolo and Bidwell Perk as part of their educational experience. Maybe by the time they leave Chico, this factof life will have percolated its way into their brains: Starbucks is not a synonym for coffeehouse. They can verify this by looking it up in their thesauruses.

Hamor talked to me about his decision to sell fair trade, organic coffee. He said product-conscious Chicoans appreciate coffeehouses that have thought about the economic and environmental ramifications for the countries where coffee is grown. He told me the coffee he sells is grown beneath the rainforest canopy, which keeps the natural vegetation from having to be cut down.

Another thing I appreciate about Café Mondo and other independents is that their decor reflects the owners’ personalities. They’re not a pre-packaged corporate product.

I suppose Starbucks’ supporters and the company itself would claim there’s room for everyone to do well in the coffeehouse business. But I want the locals to do fabulously well. I think we owe it to them to help them prosper, even if it's at the expense of the chains.