City Pushes to ''Secede from Starbucks Nation''

Mike Kaszuba, Star Tribune

Published July 20, 2003 TOWN20

For a city with fewer than 3,000 people, Excelsior threw quite a punch when it began a summer advertising campaign with the slogan "Secede from Starbucks Nation."

The idea was to promote Excelsior, a 150-year-old community on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, as a place where small, locally owned stores and not cookie-cutter franchises are still embraced.

The city is, according to the ad strategy, a storied lakeside resort where visitors can find Yumi's Sushi Bar and not Taco Bell.

"We're just against the proliferation of sameness," said Linda Murrell, the city's Chamber of Commerce director.

To many, the tongue-in-cheek campaign is about one town's fight to preserve its identity by using a theme that may well resonate with almost any town that finds its main street overtaken with corporate logos.

The ads in a metro magazine generated support and criticism.

Starbucks officials were not amused, and a regional marketing manager from Colorado arrived in Excelsior to find out what was going on.

In July and August, the ad campaign is taking aim at Home Depot and the Hard Rock Cafe -- two more corporate giants who are not actively pursuing stores in Excelsior but represent images the Chamber of Commerce wants to steer clear of.

"I'd much rather promote a town on what we got, rather on what we don't want," said Bill Mason, whose car dealership has been a fixture in Excelsior since his father opened the doors in 1922.

"I'd love for Starbucks to come to our town," he added.

In many ways, the campaign is an attempt to recapture a uniqueness that Excelsior enjoyed in the 1960s when a large amusement park sat along the lake and Big Reggie's Danceland lured a young Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to perform in concert during the group's first U.S. tour, in 1964.

But the dance hall burned down in 1973, the 50-year-old amusement park with the big roller coaster closed a year later, and there are those who feel that the void has never been filled.

In the past 15 years, several of Excelsior's best-loved stores have also closed. The Olds Dry Goods Co., a throwback clothing store on Water Street that dated to 1929, has been gone for eight years. The old Excelsior Hardware building, which had a major fire four years ago, still sits empty.

Mick and Mr. Jimmy

It was in another of the city's landmark stores, the since-closed Bacon Drug, where longtime city residents insist that Jagger was inspired to write the Rolling Stones' anthem, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

According to the story, Jagger arrived at the drugstore to get a prescription filled on the morning after playing at Danceland and met Jimmy Hutmaker, a longtime resident.

Hutmaker, who said he had met Jagger at the concert, said he complained to Jagger that he had just ordered a cherry coke at the drugstore but instead got a regular coke. "I told Mick, 'You can't always get what you want,' " Hutmaker said.

Though the story has never been verified, references to a drugstore, a cherry soda, a prescription and "Mr. Jimmy" -- Hutmaker's nickname -- all appear in the song.

And Hutmaker, now 71, still walks daily through Excelsior's downtown, where he dispenses business cards that include the song's lyrics and identify him as the city's "roving ambassador." Mick and Jimmy's, a downtown restaurant named after Jagger and Mr. Jimmy, has since closed.

'Dear Starbucks'

It is that kind of uniqueness that the ad campaign is trying to highlight. But the reality in Excelsior, especially in more recent years, has been something different.

A draft study on downtown revitalization, released in May, concluded that "Excelsior's historically strong and vibrant downtown is beginning to lose some of its luster." The study suggests a plan that includes a possible parking ramp, an expanded City Hall and library, and updated streetscapes. The City Council is to consider the study in August.

Armed with a small budget, Murrell and the Excelsior Area Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, began meeting late last year with AB Advertising, a Minneapolis firm that wanted to test an idea. "We just got the feeling they wanted to make a little noise," said Bill Andrews, the company president.

The first ad, like the others, was geared to a younger audience and appeared in June. In the ad, a four-paragraph letter begins with "Dear Starbucks." The letter goes on to state that "You see, Ann here owns the Bean and Wine Cafe . . .

"Then, there's Bernie. She always pours a hot cup in her tearoom, and we'd hate to see her out on the street.

"So you see, Starbucks, it's not that we don't like coffee. It's just that we prefer our own."

Not that orange

In the July ad, a letter to Home Depot explained that in Excelsior "we already have a few hardware stores of our own and even our own paint shop." The letter concluded by adding, "So thank you Home Depot, nothing against the color orange, but we just prefer to see it in our sunsets."

Bridget Barrett, a Starbucks official, arrived in Excelsior after the first ad ran. "They really misunderstood what our mission and what our values are," said Barrett, referring to those who were behind the ad campaign.

"When we come into a community, [we] are there to enhance a community," she said. "We are not there to take anything away from anyone."

For the record, neither Starbucks nor Home Depot nor the Hard Rock Cafe are considering moves into Excelsior. They were, as Murrell explained, chosen for what they represent. What's more, the city is largely fully developed, and only 1 square mile in size. "There ain't space here" for a large-scale store on the scale of Home Depot, she said.

And although it is not readily acknowledged, Excelsior has long been populated by a few corporate franchises. A Pizza Hut, for example, is located downtown.

Mixed feelings

Doug Plott, the co-owner of a jewelry store in Excelsior, said he was an early champion of the campaign. "I was intrigued," he said. Plott said stores such as Starbucks "represent the mall, the [chain] store. The store you can walk into between New York, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Dallas, and they're the same.

"Everything looks the same. Everybody fits that mold," he said.

But Plott, whose store has been a Water Street fixture for a decade, has a surprising opinion of the type of store that Excelsior needs.

"Something like a Target," he said.

Jim Olds, Excelsior's clerk-treasurer, said he hopes the ad campaign works. In the mid-1990s, Olds closed the Olds Dry Goods Co., a store his grandfather bought in 1929. The store's demise, he said, was because of the industry pressures facing small independents. "Six or eight major chains -- retailers -- were calling all the shots," he said.

"I long for the old days," said Olds, 64, who was born in Excelsior and still lives there.

Another longtime resident and business owner, Bob Bolles, said that despite the ad campaign's popularity, it will not help the city in the long run.

"The franchise businesses are the more stable businesses," Bolles said. "I can see the tongue-in-cheek aspect [of the ads, but] I think people would rather not offend another group of businesses."

Mike Kaszuba is at mkaszuba@startribune.com.