After two arson attacks at a Starbucks construction site in Taos, New Mexico in 2023, a developer is trying again to build the chain's first drive-through cafe in the mountain town with a history of revolts and opposition by some to national chains.
It did not take long for locals in this community of 6,500 to come up with a nickname for the would-be coffee shop: "Charbucks." Meanwhile, the building contractor from Albuquerque, the state's largest city, has installed video cameras and a security guard sleeps at the site in a camouflage trailer.
Just over a mile north of the site of the store, which Starbucks hopes to open in the spring of 2025, patrons at one of Taos' oldest independent coffee shops are tight-lipped about the attacks.
"We don't know who did it, but we loved it," said Todd Lazar, a holistic healer, as he chatted with other regulars on a bench outside the World Cup, just off Taos' central plaza.
Their conversation echoes criticism Starbucks faced as it moved into Europe and Asia that the U.S. coffee chain clashes with local culture and will shovel money out of communities. Starbucks operates or licenses around 39,500 cafes worldwide.
Stickers plastered on locally owned businesses show the Starbucks logo – which features a mermaid – on fire, with the mermaid's face replaced by La Calavera Catrina, a skull character associated with Mexico's Day of the Dead and that country's national identity.
After the first fire in August 2023, the word "NO" preceded by an expletive was spray-painted on the partially burned structure intended to be a Starbucks.
From the 1680 Indigenous Pueblo Revolt against Spanish settlement, to the 1847 Taos Revolt against U.S. occupation and more recently an arson attack on a development tycoon and opposition to a billionaire's ski resort development, Taos locals have resisted outside forces.
"Taos is a dynamic and volatile contact zone between different groups, imperial powers, ecotones," said Sylvia Rodriguez, emerita professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico who has conducted research on her home town of Taos for decades.
Located 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) above sea level in northern New Mexico's high mountain desert, Taos is known for its UNESCO World Heritage Site Native American settlement, art scene and steep ski runs.
The area also has deep social inequalities and disconnect between Indigenous, Hispano – descendants of colonial settlers – and other communities, with New Mexico's highest property crime rate.
People like Lazar complain that a wave of remote workers during and after the pandemic are driving demand for national chains and exacerbating housing shortages common in U.S. West resort towns.
Few working households can afford Taos' average home price of $460,000. Around a third of housing units sit vacant, some as second homes and vacation dwellings, others after traditional Hispano families left the area, or other factors, according to census data.
Two or three national chains pulled out of Taos projects after Starbucks burned a second time on Oct. 23, 2023, according to Larsen.
"The feeling is that Taos doesn't want corporate America," he said.
No one has been injured in the fires.
Based on news reports over the last three decades, Taos appears to be the only place in the world where a future Starbucks cafe has been burned to the ground.
Neither contractor Hart Construction nor Arizona-based developer and building owner Clint Jameson responded to requests for comment. On his company website, Jameson, who plans to lease the property to Starbucks, describes himself as "relentless" and a "development maverick."
Police believe they know the culprit, or culprits, but lack evidence to place them at the site during the blazes, Larsen said. Taos Police Chief John Wentz declined to comment.
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