My interpretation of my café ethnography is that Coffee by Design on India Street is in a gentrified neighborhood. The vast majority of patrons I saw in the café were 50s/60s Caucasians, followed by 30s/40s Caucasians, mostly well dressed. Most people visiting the café were only stopping in – not staying for prolonged periods. I suspect India Street is a popular thruway for Portland residents coming home from the south, but it seems out of the way for anyone coming from I-295. It’s only two blocks from Congress Street, though.
The next closest coffee shop is Crema in Arabica Roasters, down the hill. It’s larger and more noticeable from Commercial St, but Coffee by Design seems to have a following. Many patrons had reward cards, indicating regular customers. Coffee by Design also has four stores in Portland, making it a citywide known brand. CBD also has one location in Freeport (besides selling beans to other coffee shops around Maine, for example Little Dog in Brunswick) expanding its brand across the state.
Notes from Coffee By Design, India St. Oct 3rd, 4:30-6:30pm
4:30 – Two older (70s?) white gentlemen in line to buy coffee, products. Older, white couple sitting by door. One barista making/ serving drinks – short, pixie cut with blue earings/gages, tattoo on arm. Middle-aged couple sitting outside.
4:40 – Second barista joins, tattoos on arm, also. Complains about being annoyed by road construction (broken sewer line) outside. Two older gentlemen from earlier sitting separately by front, one has an eastern European accent. One middle aged white man, one 30s white woman came in – eclectic outfit. Older black woman joined older white man w/out accent.
4:50 – 30s/40s white couple came in. 50s, 60s business attire white man came in. 30s/40s woman and 20s/30s man, both white working class, came in together. A couple, middle aged, white. An older man, latte for here sitting by front. 30s woman w/ infant. 20s woman.
5:00 – Middle-aged, apparently gay man came in. Older woman 60s? with young child (grandson?), hanging out for a little. 20s/30s couple. Older latte man still here, doing work.
5:10 – 30s, working class man. Older latte man still here.
5:20 – Kinda quiet. 20s white man. Getting a mental map from 2nd barista. Two white teens/early 20s, one well-dressed (hipsterish), one normal dressed. 20s/30s white man. 40s/50s white woman.
5:30 – Quiet. Barista #1 cleaning while #2 works on mental map.
5:40 – Nobody new, latte guy still here.
5:50 – 30s white man with infant, staying, 20s/30s white woman, two 20s/30s white women together. 20/30s white woman in workout gear.
6:00 – 20s white man. 20s/30s white man. 50s/60s white man.
6:10 – 70s white woman/ 50s white woman together, staying. 30s/40s white couple. 60s white woman. Sudden surge: 20s white couple, staying. 50s white woman. 50s white couple. Teens/20s two white women, couple? 30s white man, staying.
6:20 – 20s white couple. 50s Indian(?) Woman. 60s white man. Young couple doing work, staying. Single 20s/30s man hanging out. 50s/70s women hanging out.
6:30 – Closing up shop, people still coming in. Two white 60s couples, 20s white woman.
10/21/14 2:30 – 3:30pm
2:30 – White, 60s man learning guitar; white, 40s business man on laptop; white, 30s man on laptop; white, 50/60s business man and 30/40s white business man talking about careers.
2:40 – guitar man talking to two 40s women; blue collar guys came in, all white, 20/30s.
2:50 – Guitar man left, as well as women talking to him; 50s white man; 20/30s white man in hoodie (left); 50/60s white man (left).
3:00 – 10/20s black(?) man and white woman together;
3:10 – Two 20s white women; white 50s mother with teen son; white 50s mother with teen daughter; 60s man and woman reading newspaper together.
3:20 – No one in line.
3:30 – Quieting down – 50/60s white man, 30s white woman, business men still here.
I think the way in which you were able to figure out the most frequent age ranges of customers in CBD is very interesting. I wonder if that is a product of the neighborhood in which CBD is located or whether CBD simply caters to a certain age demographic. When I did my café ethnography, I found that the age of the patrons varied by time of day. I could not look at patterns, as I was only there for a few hours on one day, but it was cool seeing the variation depending on the meal/time of day. Maybe there are similar patterns at CBD depending on the time of day/day of the week!
Your ethnography is very interesting and meticulous. How did you figure out the ages? You saw a lot of people are with very different ages. However, interesting that it seems like all of the people you encountered were white and business professionals. Perhaps this is because of neighborhood the cafe sits in ? An interesting experiment you could to do is visit another cafe on India Street and compare price points, age and demographic and see if you get the same results.
Overall, I was impressed with your ability to be so meticulous during your ethnography, especially in estimating the ages of the patrons you observed. I do wonder if the distribution of ages you witnessed is reflective of the neighborhood. You said that your interpretation was that the coffee shop was in a gentrified neighborhood due to the dress of the patrons who were mostly older. However, gentrifiers are usually from younger demographics. Thus, I wonder if gentrifiers in this neighborhood in Portland are indeed generally just older, or if the people visiting the cafe are simply not usually from the surrounding neighborhood.
In terms of the maps you collected, all of your mappers tend to have much more abstract mental maps than mine. Yours clearly put much more of an effort of illustrating what things to come to mind when they think of their daily life in Portland, while my mappers were very careful to properly draw spatial features like the physical geography and streets to create an accurate lay of the land. I wonder if there was a significant difference in the way we prompted people to draw mental maps because of these discrepancies.
Interesting notes. I would love to learn more about whether we can extrapolate some hypotheses from the mental maps about how exactly did the area become gentrified. Another interesting topic that you touched on is about the CBD brand. What is it about the branding, strategy, products, and amenities offered that makes it especially attractive to a certain age group of Caucasians, while lacking other demographic groups?