The Death of Coffee Shops_ (Advanced Article Lesson) .pdf

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Published by Macmillan Education Ltd. © Macmillan Education Limited, 2021.
Advanced
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Coffee shops take a hit in Silicon Valley –
Advanced worksheet
Warmer
a. Look at the pictures of the two meetings. In pairs, discuss the advantages and disadvantages
of each of these types of meetings.

Key words and expressions
a. Find the words and phrases in the article that match the definitions. Use the paragraph
numbers to help you.
1. in bad condition and likely to fall down (1)
2. people who invest money in new businesses that may or may not be successful
(2)
3. more modern and fashionable (2)
4. the fact of finding pleasant or useful things by chance (3)
5. a negative way to describe people interested in technical or scientific subjects
(5)
6. the noise of a lot of people talking at the same time, especially when angry or excited
(5)
7. existing or present around you (5)
8. a place where someone likes to go often (6)
9. without much activity or reaction (7)
10. better or more important than anyone or anything else in a particular activity
(8)
11. somewhere that is seen as the centre of a particular activity (9)
12. an occasion when everyone leaves a place at the same time (12)
1
2
Image credits: Getty Images/monkeybusinessimages (left);
Getty Images/Ariel Skelley (right)

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Advanced
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
What the death of coffee shops tells us about
Silicon Valley
THE TECH COMMUNITY NEEDS PHYSICAL PLACES TO MEET, PROGRAM, PITCH, MAKE DEALS AND BRAINSTORM
TIM BRADSHAW SEPTEMBER 8 2020
The Creamery never had particularly good coffee.
What it did have was a perfect location at one of the
technology industry’s most valuable intersections.
The ramshackle café was in the start-up friendly
SoMa district of San Francisco, across the street
from the Caltrain station that ran commuters all the
way down to San Jose at the southernmost tip of
Silicon Valley.
That made it a favourite spot for venture capitalists
visiting from Sand Hill Road who did not wish to
waste precious time going too far into Soma to meet
prospective investors. Founded in 2008, the café
soon became a San Francisco institution, even as
hipper coffee chains, such as Philz, Blue Bottle and
Sightglass, expanded across the city.
The Creamery brought a serendipity to offline social
networking that no app has ever matched. But no
more: last month, the Creamery closed for good.
Many hospitality businesses across the world have
fallen victim to the pandemic. In the UK, for instance,
sandwich chain Pret A Manger is closing 30 branches.
But Silicon Valley’s coffee shops are more than just
caffeine stops — they are venues for programming,
pitching, dealmaking and brainstorming.
That these conversations could be so easily
overheard seemed strange to me when I first moved
there, and it can be irritating for residents who don’t
work in tech to be constantly surrounded by a nerdy
hubbub. For me at least, over the years, it became
a useful form of ambient awareness of the industry’s
latest obsessions.
It is especially difficult to watch independent San
Francisco outfits such as the Creamery disappear
when there is so much money surrounding them.
Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View is another Silicon
Valley entrepreneur hang-out, as well as playing
host to weekly open mic nights and the Knit Wit
knitting club.
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The founders of WhatsApp worked from there in the
chat app’s early years; I bumped into them at the
same low-key coffee bar soon after they sold the
company to Facebook for $19bn. In July, Red Rock
said it would close if it could not raise $300,000.
Mountain View is home to the headquarters of
Google, LinkedIn and Silicon Valley’s pre-eminent
accelerator programme Y Combinator, as well as
the innovators of previous decades such as Silicon
Graphics and General Magic. Family homes there
typically sell for more than $2m. Yet after a month and
a half on GoFundMe, at the time of writing Red Rock
was still $200,000 short of its target.
If the tech community is letting hubs such as the
Creamery and Red Rock die, maybe VCs just want
fancier coffee these days. But I fear a deeper problem
may be emerging.
Silicon Valley thrust social media and video
conferencing on an unsuspecting world and in the
past six months we have never been more grateful.
Yet the cradle of the internet has always thrived on
physical networking. Nowhere has been able to match
the Bay Area’s density of talent, capital and ambition.
Now, the opportunities for serendipity — so vital for
nourishing the community — seem to be diminishing,
in no small part due to the rapid shift to remote
working that the tech industry has embraced:
Facebook, Twitter and others have all said they
will allow people to work from anywhere after the
pandemic recedes.
Talk of a mass exodus from San Francisco feels
overdone. The city’s overheated housing market
could see rents plunge 25 per cent and still feel
expensive. Yet moves towards long-term remote
working point to a less romantic future than upping
sticks to Lake Tahoe: techies stuck in their tiny
apartments, staring at Zoom all day simply to avoid
the two-hour commute.
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Continued on next page

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Advanced
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
If tech staff do become more widely distributed, that
would only reflect where most of the industry’s best
ideas are coming from these days. Some of the
most influential tech companies today are not based
in the Valley: TikTok is Chinese, with its US base
in Los Angeles. Shopify, the ecommerce platform
that inspired several start-up ideas in the latest Y
Combinator batch, is in Ottawa, Canada. The most
important new internet markets — such as India,
Indonesia and Nigeria — are far beyond the horizon
of closeted US West Coasters.
13 Silicon Valley’s monopoly on ideas has been ebbing
away for some time. Without the right physical
places to meet unexpected people and exchange
new notions, that trickle could become a flood.
While Big Tech races to build an interconnected 3D
virtual world, it must remember the value of IRL.
Losing community hubs such as the Creamery risks
undermining what has made the Valley so special for
the past 50 years.
14
Tim Bradshaw, September 8 2020
© The Financial Times.
All rights reserved.
Articles republished from the Financial Times.

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Advanced
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Understanding the article
a. In pairs, read what the author mentions about the topics below and identify if the author
expresses a fact (F) or an opinion (O). The paragraph numbers have been given to help you.
1. Customers of The Creamery (2)
2. Non-tech customers in The Creamery (5)
3. The Creamery’s disappearance (6)
4. The founders of WhatsApp (7)
5. The use of social media and video conferencing in 2020 (10)
6. Chance meetings (11)
7. Decisions by Facebook and Twitter (11)
8. The San Francisco housing market (12)
Business language – first and second conditionals
a. Write conditional sentences about the article using the information given.
1. Red Rock / not raise / money / have to shut down
2. Tech workers / not meet in real life / fewer opportunities / meet people unexpectedly
3. Tech companies / give money / help Red Rock / able to stay open
4. Rent drop / San Francisco / 25 per cent / still be expensive
5. No physical places / tech workers / meet unexpected people / Silicon Valley / become less
important / tech world
3
4

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Advanced
b. Write conditional sentences about businesses affected by the pandemic in your area. You
could consider the implications on the following: customers, staff, the wider community
and networking opportunities, the local economy.
Business language – prepositions
a. Complete the phrase with the correct preposition. Use the definitions to help you.
1. up sticks a place = to leave one place for another
2. thrive doing = to become successful or happy in a particular situation,
especially one that other people would not enjoy
3. fall victim something = become a victim of a plan
4. thrust something someone = to force someone to do or
accept something
5. ebb = to gradually become smaller or less
b. Complete the sentences with the correct phrase from activity a. You will need to modify some
of the expressions to the correct tense.
1. My uncle credit card fraud last year. He lost thousands of pounds.
2. The popularity of coffee shops in our area is gradually .
3. She was not suited to life in the country. She clearly living in a
busy city.
4. It’s not fair to such major responsibility a
junior team member.
5. My parents the Lake District when they retired.
c. Choose three of the phrases above. Use them to write three sentences about the effect that the
coronavirus pandemic has had on business in your local area.
5

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Advanced
Discussion questions
How does the author use the underlined adjectives in the following excerpts to express his
opinions? Do you like his choice of language?
‘Talk of a mass exodus from San Francisco feels overdone. The city’s overheated housing market could
see rents plunge 25 per cent and still feel expensive.’
‘… it can be irritating for residents who don’t work in tech to be constantly surrounded by a nerdy hubbub.
For me at least, over the years, it became a useful form of ambient awareness of the industry’s latest
obsessions.’
Do you think Silicon Valley’s large tech companies have a duty to save the coffee shops that
hosted their meetings. Why? Why not?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Silicon Valley losing its monopoly on technological
innovation?
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your working life? If you had to work from home, what
impact did this have on you and your relationship with your work colleagues?
Wider business theme – Creative meetings
a. Get into groups of three or four. You’re going to hold a meeting. However, this is no ordinary
meeting! Your teacher will give you a meeting scenario.
In the meeting, you should discuss:
• ideas for how to make meetings more creative
• your opinions on your meeting scenario
b. Present your ideas and opinions to the class. Listen to each of the other groups and take notes.
c. Write a short article (200–300 words) about creative meetings. Include:
• advantages and disadvantages of different meeting scenarios
• your opinion on your own experience of a new meeting scenario
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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Intermediate
Coffee shops take a hit in Silicon Valley –
Intermediate worksheet
Warmer
a. Look at the pictures of the two meetings. In pairs, discuss the advantages and disadvantages
of each of these types of meetings.

Key words and expressions
a. Write the words or phrases from the box next to the definitions below.
1. a small business that is just beginning
2. meeting people to talk about work or interests
3. to make someone feel annoyed or impatient
4. a negative way to describe people interested in technical or scientific subjects
5. without much activity or reaction
6. somewhere that is seen as the centre of a particular activity
7. the amount of something in a place compared to its size
8. to become less
9. if an amount or level does this, it becomes much lower extremely quickly
10. complete control over something by one organization or person
1
2
density diminish hub irritate low-key
monopoly nerdy networking plunge start-up
Image credits: Getty Images/monkeybusinessimages (left);
Getty Images/Ariel Skelley (right)

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Intermediate
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
What the death of coffee shops tells us about
Silicon Valley
THE TECH COMMUNITY NEEDS PHYSICAL PLACES TO MEET, PROGRAM, PITCH, MAKE DEALS AND BRAINSTORM
TIM BRADSHAW SEPTEMBER 8 2020
The Creamery never had particularly good coffee.
What it did have was a perfect location at one of the
technology industry’s most valuable intersections.
The ramshackle café was in the start-up friendly
SoMa district of San Francisco, across the street
from the Caltrain station that ran commuters all the
way down to San Jose at the southernmost tip of
Silicon Valley.
That made it a favourite spot for venture capitalists
visiting from Sand Hill Road who did not wish to
waste precious time going too far into Soma to meet
prospective investors. Founded in 2008, the café
soon became a San Francisco institution, even as
hipper coffee chains, such as Philz, Blue Bottle and
Sightglass, expanded across the city.
The Creamery brought a serendipity to offline social
networking that no app has ever matched. But no
more: last month, the Creamery closed for good.
Many hospitality businesses across the world have
fallen victim to the pandemic. In the UK, for instance,
sandwich chain Pret A Manger is closing 30 branches.
But Silicon Valley’s coffee shops are more than just
caffeine stops — they are venues for programming,
pitching, dealmaking and brainstorming.
That these conversations could be so easily
overheard seemed strange to me when I first moved
there, and it can be irritating for residents who don’t
work in tech to be constantly surrounded by a nerdy
hubbub. For me at least, over the years, it became
a useful form of ambient awareness of the industry’s
latest obsessions.
It is especially difficult to watch independent San
Francisco outfits such as the Creamery disappear
when there is so much money surrounding them.
Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View is another Silicon
Valley entrepreneur hang-out, as well as playing
host to weekly open mic nights and the Knit Wit
knitting club.
1
2
3
4
5
6
The founders of WhatsApp worked from there in the
chat app’s early years; I bumped into them at the
same low-key coffee bar soon after they sold the
company to Facebook for $19bn. In July, Red Rock
said it would close if it could not raise $300,000.
Mountain View is home to the headquarters of
Google, LinkedIn and Silicon Valley’s pre-eminent
accelerator programme Y Combinator, as well as
the innovators of previous decades such as Silicon
Graphics and General Magic. Family homes there
typically sell for more than $2m. Yet after a month and
a half on GoFundMe, at the time of writing Red Rock
was still $200,000 short of its target.
If the tech community is letting hubs such as the
Creamery and Red Rock die, maybe VCs just want
fancier coffee these days. But I fear a deeper problem
may be emerging.
Silicon Valley thrust social media and video
conferencing on an unsuspecting world and in the
past six months we have never been more grateful.
Yet the cradle of the internet has always thrived on
physical networking. Nowhere has been able to match
the Bay Area’s density of talent, capital and ambition.
Now, the opportunities for serendipity — so vital for
nourishing the community — seem to be diminishing,
in no small part due to the rapid shift to remote
working that the tech industry has embraced:
Facebook, Twitter and others have all said they
will allow people to work from anywhere after the
pandemic recedes.
Talk of a mass exodus from San Francisco feels
overdone. The city’s overheated housing market
could see rents plunge 25 per cent and still feel
expensive. Yet moves towards long-term remote
working point to a less romantic future than upping
sticks to Lake Tahoe: techies stuck in their tiny
apartments, staring at Zoom all day simply to avoid
the two-hour commute.
7
8
9
10
11
12
Continued on next page

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Intermediate
Silicon Valley’s monopoly on ideas has been ebbing
away for some time. Without the right physical
places to meet unexpected people and exchange
new notions, that trickle could become a flood.
While Big Tech races to build an interconnected 3D
virtual world, it must remember the value of IRL.
Losing community hubs such as the Creamery risks
undermining what has made the Valley so special for
the past 50 years.
14
If tech staff do become more widely distributed, that
would only reflect where most of the industry’s best
ideas are coming from these days. Some of the
most influential tech companies today are not based
in the Valley: TikTok is Chinese, with its US base
in Los Angeles. Shopify, the ecommerce platform
that inspired several start-up ideas in the latest Y
Combinator batch, is in Ottawa, Canada. The most
important new internet markets — such as India,
Indonesia and Nigeria — are far beyond the horizon
of closeted US West Coasters.
13
Tim Bradshaw, September 8 2020
© The Financial Times.
All rights reserved.
Articles republished from the Financial Times.
Glossary
venture capitalist
someone who invests money in new businesses that may or may not be
successful
serendipity
the fact of finding pleasant or useful things by chance

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Intermediate
BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Understanding the article
a. In pairs, read what the author mentions about the topics below and identify if the author
expresses a fact (F) or an opinion (O). The paragraph numbers have been given to help you.
1. The coffee sold at The Creamery (1)
2. Silicon Valley’s coffee shops (4)
3. Red Rock Coffee (6)
4. Family homes in Mountain View (8)
5. The Bay Area (10)
6. Locations of influential tech companies and new internet markets (13)
Business language – first and second conditionals
a. Match the sentence halves to make conditional sentences about the text.
1. If Red Rock doesn’t raise enough money … a.
there will be fewer opportunities to
meet people unexpectedly.
2. If tech workers can’t meet in coffee shops … b. it will still be expensive.
3. If the tech companies gave money to help c. it will have to shut down.
Red Rock …
4. Even if rents drop in San Francisco by 25 per cent …. d.
Silicon Valley would continue to lose
its control on tech ideas.
5. If there were no physical places for tech workers to e. it would be able to stay open.
meet people unexpectedly …
b. Write conditional sentences about businesses affected by the coronavirus crisis in your area.
You could consider the following: customers, staff, the wider community and networking
opportunities, the local economy.
Business language – verbs relating to ideas and growth
a. Complete the missing letters to make verbs that match the definitions.
1. If a business, organization or activity does this, it grows by including more people, moving into
new areas, selling more products, etc.
x a d
3
4
5

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Intermediate
2. to try to persuade someone of how good something is
p h
3. to give someone the enthusiasm to do or create something
i p r
4. to completely accept something such as a new belief, idea, or way or life
e b c
5. to give something in return for something they give you
e c g
b. Complete the sentences with the correct verbs from activity a in their correct form.
1. She me to want to become a CEO.
2. They met yesterday and ideas about their plans for their departments.
3. The company is planning to into the Asia market.
4. Have you tried your ideas to management?
5. He changed companies and really his new company’s philosophy.
c. Use three of the verbs above to write three sentences about your work/company and how you
generate ideas.
Discussion questions
Do you think Silicon Valley’s large tech companies should be responsible for saving the coffee shops that
hosted their meetings? Why? Why not?
The author says that Silicon Valley’s monopoly on tech ideas has been diminishing. Is this a positive
development or a negative one? Share your opinion.
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your working life? If you had to work from home, what impact
did this have on you and your relationship with your work colleagues?
6

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BUSINESSNEWSLESSONS
Intermediate
Wider business theme – Creative meetings
a. You are going to work in groups of three or four to hold a meeting. However, this is no ordinary
meeting! Your teacher will give you a meeting strategy.
In the meeting, you should discuss:
• ideas for how to make meetings more creative
• your opinions on your meeting strategy
b. Give a three- to four-minute presentation on your ideas and opinions to the class. Listen to the
other groups’ presentations and take notes.
c. Write a short paragraph about creative meetings. Include:
• advantages and disadvantages of different meeting strategies
• your opinion on the meeting strategy that you practised
7

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