Rise of the Coffee Shop Economy | The Meaning of Larry Page's Empty Chair

Kyrgyzstan’s boom in Western-style coffee shops has sparked a showdown between the new and old-school ways of doing business.

“I’ll take a flat white with the veggie panini, please,” I say, in English. Within seconds, the espresso machine is making its deafening but oh-so-satisfying whir — loud enough to make a nearby student glance up over his MacBook Air. A tourist is reading his Lonely Planet guidebook, and a besuited man with a briefcase ducks in for an air-conditioned break. Unremarkable, right?

Wrong. I’m somewhere where this is no mindless everyday experience but a genuine symbol of economic transformation. Here in Kyrgyzstan, the poorest of all post-Soviet republics, the international-style coffee shop is the community’s chosen measure of progress — and a metric by which Kyrgyzstan has progressed a hell of a lot. Until 2012, there was no Western-style “coffee shop” to be found here (or Western-style anything, really); now, there are more than 40. They’re on “almost every street in the city,” says Aziza Ishmakhametova, a program manager at the Central Asia Free Market Institute. “They have changed our lifestyles.”

Mayor Francis Suarez could have a statewide political future, if he can use a ceremonial office as a springboard.

Because there is nowhere else to talk in peace, Francis Xavier Suarez and his tailored gray suit, slicked-back black hair and chrome watch are crammed into the back room of a nursing home with dingy walls and the strong smell of fish. “When you’re the mayor, you’ve got to go everywhere,” the Cuban-American Republican says, and this day his job is to explain emergency procedures ahead of hurricane season. The unglamorous setting is fitting for Suarez, despite his soap-opera good looks and political-scion upbringing as the son of a controversial mayor. After all, it was the devout Catholic father of two who proclaimed after his first State of the City address in February that Miami needed to weave a narrative that “we’re not just a glitzy fun-and-sun, low-tax city.”

Trying to shed the city’s unserious image, Suarez, 40, has advocated a tech-centric approach — flirting with Amazon and Spotify in headquarters bids, working with Tesla to provide public super-charging stations and partnering with WeWork on new downtown offices. Also on the docket: affordable housing, addressing climate change and traffic (among his solutions for the latter … electric scooters). The end goal? To create “a city that is more compassionate and caring,” as Suarez said in his victory speech, moments after winning 86 percent of the mayoral vote last November. “A Miami that is no longer a tale of two cities.” Looking around him now, Suarez doubles down: “Every major city I’ve studied is grappling with this phenomenon … a growing, glitzy, glamorous side, and then an area not too different from where we’re sitting now.” The dream is bigger. “It’s more than a city — it’s an idea. And the idea is one of multiculturalism, of inclusion, of limitless potential.”

The traditionally White, male and middle-aged sport is finally recruiting and training women as pit crew members, engineers and executives.

Brehanna Daniels was munching on a Chick-fil-A sandwich when Norfolk State athletics department member Tiffani-Dawn Sykes suggested a career path that would change her life. It was the spring of 2016, just weeks from graduation, and Daniels — a Spartans senior point guard — was in a quandary about what to do after college: train for a low-paying professional basketball opportunity that might emerge overseas, or start a career in sports media. Sykes had yet another idea.

“NASCAR was holding a tryout on campus, and she thought I should try out,” recalls Daniels, now 24. “I’m like, ‘What? I don’t even like racing, and you want me to drive?’”

What Daniels hadn’t realized was that the tryout was part of NASCAR’s push to diversify its companywide roster beyond drivers to also cover crew members, back-office employees, engineers and fan communities. Leading those efforts is NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Crew Member Development program, launched in 2009 and managed by Rev Racing, a team that trains minority and female candidates. And the efforts are yielding results for women.