Wokespeak is a bunch of gibberish anyway, but there’s a particular variety of it that’s worse than anything, and that’s when it’s used commercially to sell stuff.
Let’s talk about the big sign that Philz Coffee put up in their Lakeshore Ave. store.
You can’t miss it. As soon as you walk in, it hits you in the face. It’s a long message and every sentence begins with “Unity is…”. For instance, “Unity is a belief. Unity is a community. Unity is a choice.” And on and on, ending with the coda: “UNITY IS A PHILZ THING.”
Doesn’t that make you want to buy your coffee from Philz?
We’re all in favor of unity, we children of God. Unity is “little black boys and black girls join[ing] hands with little white boys and white girls,” as Dr. King famously put it. Unity is the mosaic of which Oakland is built, the rainbow that makes Oakland special. Unity is a simple little word that means so much in the minds of progressives. Unity is equity. Unity is the feeling you get when you vote for Barbara Lee and know you’re signaling your virtue.
Unity also is an advertising gimmick, at least as far as Philz is concerned. Their ownership knows that the people who live along Lakeshore Avenue have their choice of places to get coffee. They also know that most of those people are progressive liberals, if not social democrats, and constitute a multitude of ethnicities and races. So by putting up their “unity” sign, Philz is saying, “Hey, we’re just like you. We’re all on the same team. Drop your money here and keep it in the community! Because, remember, Unity is a Philz thing.”
But is Philz really the right messenger? The coffee chain was just bought by a private equity firm, Freeman Spogli, for a reported $145 million. The firm owns not just restaurants but companies in digital commerce, consumer services, health and wellness, franchising, home décor, clothing, mattresses, outdoor gear, thrift shops, wine importing and distribution, auto dealerships, supermarkets and financial services, with a combined $32 billion in “transaction value” as of last April. And now, of course, they have Philz, with its 75 stores in California and Chicago.
When they talk about “community,” that apparently doesn’t include their own employees. As part of the acquisition deal, “Employees holding common stock were told their shares will be wiped out with no compensation, while executives and preferred shareholders will cash in. According to SF Gate, “Former employees [said] that while Philz began as a close-knit small business, the company’s culture has transformed in the past five years, especially when large investments from private equity firms started rolling in.” Adds SFIST, “If you didn't think that the once-gritty cafe chain Philz Coffee was a sellout company before, it's hard to argue against that claim now.”
Philz’s coffee is admittedly good, but they’ve gotten super expensive. I paid $5.95 for a small cold brew the other day (by contrast, my favorite coffee place, Tierra Mia, on Broadway, charges $5.25).
So what’s going on here is that Philz is ripping off consumers who are naive enough to pay extra for a cup of coffee because Philz has a schmaltzy sign about “unity.” This is what I call “eqploitation,” using the language of wokeness to manipulate gullible consumers into supporting a goliath corporation posing as a member of “the community.”
Steve Heimoff