No smoking in the Starbucks
A hot issue on my own weblog has been DC's much contested ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. Of course, I prefer market solutions to an all-out ban, but even some of my usually libertarian readers argued that there was a "market failure" at work in the bar scene that made the ban acceptable. Some posts on the subject are here and here.
Tying this back to coffee, I followed up with a post about Starbucks' success at introducing smokefree coffee shops into heavily pro-smoking markets around the world. I didn't find anything authoritative on the subject, but I did uncover some interesting anecdotes and speculated on why Starbucks could offer smokefree options so rapidly while American bars seem slower to change. If you'd like to read the post or offer some feedback, check it out here.
