One Victoria | 63 m | 19 fl | Complete

[ac3r]

I would guess Starbucks knows what they are doing when they pick locations and downtown Kitchener has a lot of upscale coffee choices nearby already so the market may not be big enough to support a walk-in only starbucks. They pay the employees pretty well and have good benefits apparently so I would guess they need a high volume of customers to keep a location profitable.

This is precicely why you wont see Starbucks downtown for a long time. Such chain cafes (which feel like they're more a fast food place) would not do very good downtown firstly because of the small population, but secondly the unique sense of community you get in a city of this size. This is primarily the reason you don't see any (excluding Coffee Culture, I suppose).

Downtown Kitchener has a very noticeable sense of community because of the still modest population. Anyone who spends most of their time down there will know what I mean. There's a closeness to everything and everyone. You run into the same faces and crowds and communities and know what kind of people live and work there. As such, most of the popular cafes are independent and draw people to them because the downtown is - ignoring the universities - the main place in the region for culture and community. They serve as a hub for the arts, music, activism, outreach, etc. Queen Street Commons Cafe is incredibly popular thanks to its philosophy towards work, community, arts, volunteerism. Pyrus shares this atmosphere. Adventurers Guild has become a place for gamers and similar to hang out. Matter of Taste has been down there for so long, too, for these reasons as well.

There is currently no reason why anything like a Starbucks would need or want to open up downtown and frankly, I doubt many people who live and work down there would welcome such a place, unless you really like cheap, bad coffee. They work in larger urban areas because of the sheer amount of people but also within suburbs because of the culture (or lack of) that they are a part of: fast, cheap, easy products.