In the upper photo it's more like 15 people at most. The inefficiency of cars astounding once you actually start paying attention to it. Moving to cars for every transit mode is in the 10 ten worst decisions humanity has ever made.

I see 7 people getting a coffee in the top photo.

Honestly seems more of a critique of grind culture we've got in the US. Used to be you had time in the morning or afternoon to enjoy a cafe but now you've got a job you can't afford to quit in a town you can't afford to live in and need to drive an hour to get there with gas you can't afford... that last part because there are no trains anymore, too.

Yeah, halfway through that, I admit it's also still bullshit car culture nonsense, too. Lol

Bring back third spaces!!

Nah that top photo is at most 10 people getting a coffee.

Cars suck

Even the architecture of the Starbucks is so inhuman. It looks like a fireplace in an AirBnB that's just a TV that shows a video of a fire.

I dunno, sharing a single coffee with 30 other people sounds like a pain whether everybody's in cars or not.

Coffee too expensive to get and not enough money to enjoy not just coffee, life as well.

Is that the Inception cafe?

I mean I agree, but have any of you been to a busy cafe or restaurant? Listening to 30 people inevitably shouting over each other while I try to drink coffee isn't my idea of enjoyment.

Personally, I dont want to sit with that many people. Get in my car and drive away from them as far as I can

There are 15 people at best getting coffee in that first image

The average Starbucks does not have a throughput that should legally allow them to have a drive though.

It takes like 5 minutes per car and one near me used to regularly back up on to the road and block the adjacent parking lot.

It just doesn’t make sense to go to the start bucks drive through ever, so I don’t know who is foolish enough to form these lines.

Notwithstanding that Starbucks is an awful corporation with either subpar coffee or comparable sugar levels to ice cream.

That's more like 10 people on the first image

My main takeaway here is that people drinking Starbucks are not enjoying their coffee

I live in a country where drive through isn't that common. But when a huge local e-shop introduced pickup by drive through, I decided to try it out. I tried it twice. First time it was relatively empty so I though "Hah, that's actually pretty convinient and fast". Second time it was pretty packed and I thought "Omg this must be the stupidest idea ever. What am I doing here? I'm sitting in an artificial traffic jam which I literally can't leave while employees handle a fraction of customers at once. And why exactly? So I don't leave my car?"

USA vs the world.

?

One unstated thing that helps create conditions for the above:

The people above pictured don't have robust unions and labor laws that save you from being annihilated for being late not early enough one time.

What's that area surrounding the cafe called?

Hopefully, we'll see more and more street reclamation, with cars pushed to parking lots and downtown streets reserved for walking, bicycling, and the occasional small electric vehicle for those who need them. Local laws need to change, so we all need to vote in local elections. Voter turnout for local elections is abysmal in most cities and towns.

We used to have places like Der Wienerschnitzel and Taco Bell with tables outside, but you still had to drive there and park. I don't know if new places are built like this anymore, probably not many. The last gasp of this sort of thing in America.

Surely the bottom picture should be an Italian piazza. French coffee culture is not much to write home about (they lean towards robusta rather than arabica, as that’s what their colonies grew) and the coffee you get in a pretty café in the touristy parts of Paris is going to be mediocre at best.

Drive thru coffee shops should be illegal.

Does Europe have the bikini barista stands like we have out here? Those are Starbucks biggest competition.

Well, that and unions.

As soon as you land.... leaving the imperial core.... it is ssoooooo much better.

💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚 💚

In all fairness, Starbucks in Europe even in more car centric countries are a lot more like the bottom one.

I don't think I've ever seen a drive-in to get coffee around these parts, and I've lived in several European countries.

You are making a point, just not the one you intended to make. The first coffee shop is selling to people who want a nice place to slowly enjoy their cup of coffee. The second coffee shop is targeting commuters who want to grab a coffee to drink while they are driving into work.

One is a city (Paris) as a tourist hotspot, the other is a rural area. One seems to be people getting coffee to and from work (the shadows make it look early morning, so more likely to), the other requires they have time to enjoy. I don't really see it as a very effective argument.

Tourist spot will always beat rural spot in terms of pure aesthetics - that's why it's a tourist spot. The streets around Cafe Palais Royal aren't even that pedestrian-centric, they are just small Paris streets with small sidewalks whose streets have yet to be really pedestrianized.

You know that South Park clip where San Francisco is filled with dangerous levels of Smug and people who live there are addicted to smelling their own farts?

Completely unrelated, but for some reason I thought of that. Neither of these images would be me.