Does Tonbridge need another Starbucks?...

Walking to work this morning it dawned on me that coffee shops are springing up, seemingly, all over the town; there's the dinky little coffee and chocolat place on the railway bridge, which I always feel like I will one day stop off there but never get around to it as I'm always just passing. Then there's Macdonalds of course, if you fancy a cholestorel filled breakfast with your caffeine; then, a little further, there's the oddly named No Impact Coffee and Cards, which seems a little out of place in these days of global brand coffee chains, but seems to have its regular clientelle. Then Cafe Nero of course, where you can lounge around cross-legged and try to look oh so sophisticated as you sip through the froth of your over-priced skinny decaffe latte. And now, just a hundred yards or so further up the High Street we have another Starbucks (they also have one in Sainsbury's of course already) They'll be giving away free mugs and all sorts of other gifts in order to attempt lure coffee-drinking folk away from Nero's; they'll be paying their staff peanuts to work long split-shifts as they serve there asorted choice of coffee beans in cappucino, mocha, iced, latte, espresso, filter, long, short, regular tall, decaffe (I believe they may also sell cups of tea) All from around £1.75 upwards. Mind you they'll have to sell many, many cups to pay the costs: the rent alone on that place I happen to know is in excess of £50,000 a year, then there's their staff costs, business rates, not to mention the cost of importing coffee beans from far flung parts of the globe to bring us that new coffee experience. A conservative estimate would be that they would have to sell around 90,000 cups a year just to pay their overheads, before the cost of the raw materials, that's an awful lot of coffee to be drunk by the good people of Tonbridge. Mind you that's actually only around 300 cups a day, which they probably easily do serve. I haven't even mentioned the little cafes that also dot the High Street, which I'm sure will do you a perfectly nice brew for around £1.30. So it seems that the world, and indeed Tonbridge is addicted it, they just can't get enough of the artery hardening, stress inducing, drug they call caffeine. Maybe I'll open that book store cafe after all! If I can't get the town reading books at least I can make a few bob flogging them the black stuff....