Topless Coffee Shop
Via Tyler Cowen, Governing’s Ellen Perlman wonders about nudity regulations:
Wait a minute. Topless coffee shops are allowed? Unless otherwise specified?
I ask because a topless coffee shop opened in Vassalboro, Maine, and the only way to prevent copycat businesses — say, a topless auto shop or a topless supermarket — is to pass an ordinance to ban nudity at town businesses. Is this true in all municipalities? Nudity allowed until specified otherwise? Who knew?
This may be a quirk of Maine law, because there is—or at least used to be in the fairly recent past—a topless doghnut shop in Portland.
The lack of regulatory barriers to topless non-alcoholic venues could have important implications for the business model. In DC, for example, the regulation on strip clubs is so strict that you can’t open a new strip club no matter what. That makes possession of an existing license a huge profit center. It also means that if you own one of the existing clubs, you’re in pretty good shape in terms of trying to convince a potential lender or investor that spending money on improving your club’s appeal will pay off in the long run. You’ve got a near-absolute guarantee of monopoly pricing power until the end of time. In other places, the rules aren’t that strict, but the fact still remains that if succeed in squeezing through the regulatory bar you get a some monopoly power and big profits. The economics of DC bars are like this—it’s hard to get one off the ground, but if you manage the trick it’s like you’ve been given a license to print money.
By contrast, if you open a topless coffee shop in Vassalboro that doesn’t face any regulatory issues, you’re presumably going to need to give your coffee on unusually high markup to compensate for your higher labor costs. And there’s nothing stopping me from going one exit up the Maine Turnpike and opening a competing topless coffee shop in Waterville with a somewhat-smaller markup. For all you—or your investors—know, soon there’ll be three or four topless coffee shops north of Augusta and no profits for anyone. Your best hope is to provoke a lot of stories in the national media about this outrageous topless coffee shop in Vassalboro that convinces town and county governments across Maine to issue regulations preventing topless coffee shops. You’ll be grandfathered in, and immune to competition.
43 Responses to “Topless Coffee Shop”
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March 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
People here tried to close down coffee ships where servers wore bikinis. They even tried to close off a turn lane to make it harder for people to get to one of the locations, but that was mostly the work of the competition. They’re wildly popular coffee shops.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
My concern is health and safety regulations – doesn’t topless coffee-making increase the risk of workers being scalded on bare skin?
March 16th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Finally Matt gives us his master plan to get us out of this depression: the topless economy. Too many have already lost their shirt anyway.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
“And there’s nothing stopping me from going one exit up the Maine Turnpike and opening a competing topless coffee shop in Waterville with a somewhat-smaller markup”
oh jesus. look, matt–if you have trouble with employees not showing up, will you promise *not* to fill in for them?
the last thing i want to see is you, topless, pouring me a cup of coffee. no matter how small your “mark-ups” are.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
So much wrong here- starting with the idea that I want to see anybody in Vassalboro topless.
But y’know, if it worked at all, you’d have a lot of guys getting their coffee there. And in a small town a gas pump or grocery store can be a major tax base, so Vassalboro might just turn a blind eye to the coffee shop if it drew guys who also bought some gas or groceries.
Worked for Nevada until other states figured out there was more than one way to legalize gambling.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
oh jesus. look, matt–if you have trouble with employees not showing up, will you promise *not* to fill in for them?
the last thing i want to see is you, topless, pouring me a cup of coffee. no matter how small your “mark-ups” are.
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That WOULD be agonozing, wouldn’t it?
March 16th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
This isn’t really a new concept. There was a topless donut shop in Tallahassee about 15 years ago.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Black, 2 sugars – NO MILK!
March 16th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Honest! I go there for the superior quality of coffee bean they use.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The markup on the coffee wouldn’t have to be that high. You’d just encourage customers to tip high. Strip bars in Oregon don’t pay strippers anything at all, they charge strippers to work.
You’d have a smaller pool to hire from, but it would overlap heavily with the regular waitperson pool, which is skeweed by attractive young women anyway. Even with tops, attractive women get the best tips.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
so long as all this doesn’t start up a topless bubble!
(if this happens, a sure sign that the bubble exists and is about played out will be the opening of topless Waffle House)
March 16th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
It’s not “doghnut” or “dougnuts” (which sounds obscene); it’s doughnuts!
March 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Doesn’t it get really cold in Maine? I suspect there won’t be too much topless-ness between October and April.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
A topless coffee shop? Oh yeah, that’ll work, until some poor girl gets her tit under the steamer nozzle, or bumps into another waitress on her way to the table with a tray full of hot lattes. Osha won’t stand for it, and their L&I premiums will go through the roof.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
They will have to wear some kind of asbestos pasties to prevent burns, I think.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Just so long as the coffee isn’t topless – the foamed milk on the latte is half the fun.
Joking aside, I suppose I’ve got nothing against this business, unless the Health And Safety issues cited above are real (does a T-shirt offer much protection? not all coffeeshop workers wear aprons), but I wouldn’t be caught dead patronizing their establishment, and would likely avoid the company of people that did.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
or bumps into another waitress on her way to the table with a tray full of hot lattes
I saw a movie like that once. “Oh, I’m so sorry, how can I make it feel better?” Great film.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Sarah Connor was a waitress. Trying to make her work topless in a diner would be fatal to your health.
That said, we could solve the OSHA problems by having topless female robot waitresses who look like Summer Glau.
I’d eat there every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Plus I wouldn’t have to tip a robot.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’d say the exact opposite of this:
March 16th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Richard Steven Hack, you pumped for Dollhouse next week? I am.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
There is no possible way to satisfy the market demand for topless coffee shops. If this thing catches on – and here’s hoping it does – it’ll be like those towns in Western Ireland that have 4 pubs per resident. Build 1, it will be full all the time. Build 10, they will be full all the time. Build 300 million, they’ll be full all the time. Tits are a well-known source of market failure.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Public toplessness for females is legal in NY State, because it is also legal for males. However, so many restaurants have a “No shirt, no shoes, no service” sign that I think there are health department regulations requiring EVERYONE to wear shirts in restaurants.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
the topless coffee shop has been pretty successful so far. From the local newspaper reports Vasselboro might have been able to stop if there had been overwhelming opposition to it, but there definitely wasn’t.
Basically, given the Maine economy no one can blame the guy for trying something new.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I pity the poor girls who have to listen to jokes like this every day…
March 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
So why is this post illustrated with a frickin’ cup of coffee? I think Matt’s boss there at CAP will be disappointed by his failure to take advantage of this obvious opportunity to bump up his traffic count…
March 16th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
how about slam dunkin the donut hole?
March 16th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Yeah, I was expecting a map of Maine, too.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
If there were a more general legal female topfree rule for all public spaces, there’d be much less of a market for it at the coffee shops. Plus there’d be the advantage of less hypersexualized notions of womanhood, and the end of people getting the vapors over occasional exposures of human bodies.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
So Maine gets a topless coffee house, but New Jersey bans bikini waxes? :http://www.politickernj.com/wallye/28171/corzine-proposals-state-won-t-pay-senior-erectile-dysfunction-drugs-ban-bikini-waxing
Whats up with that?
March 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
My best New England guess tells me that this concept won’t take off in Maine; maybe Mainers aren’t as prim and proper as us lace-curtain Bostonians, but my sense is that this sort of thing will be deeply frowned upon by the vernacular culture of the region.
Also, I like it when Matt goes into social science-y mode, disregarding culture and history and so forth. Or maybe I just hate the social sciences. Either way.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
So Maine gets a topless coffee house, but New Jersey bans bikini waxes?
Yay for New Jersey!
Adult women should look like adult women, not like hairless prepubescent little girls.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
But by that logic, as cases of the vapors diminish, we’ll get more uptight about farts.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I believe there used to be, late seventies / early eighties, a restaurant in the business district of New Orleans with totally nude (except with footware) servers, both male and female. Catered to the three martini lunch crowd.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Re: My best New England guess tells me that this concept won’t take off in Maine; maybe Mainers aren’t as prim and proper as us lace-curtain Bostonians, but my sense is that this sort of thing will be deeply frowned upon by the vernacular culture of the region.
Exactly. We New Englanders are not big fans of commercialized sexuality, thank God, and any such establishment will find little demand for is services in our region.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
There actually hasn’t been that much condemnation of the topless coffee shop. Some of course, but not as much as I expected. It’s real test will be in a few months when the novelty wears off.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Hot coffee on the breasts isn’t much different than hot coffee on most of the flesh. Hot coffee on pantyhose is excruciating.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Topless in Maine? Looks like global warming is indeed progressing faster than the scientists predict.
Any bets on when the first topless outlet opens in Greenland?
March 17th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Aesthetically, I agree, but I don’t think you really want this to be the law, do you?
I decided not to read the entire text of NJ’s proposed changes to the licensing of cosmetology, but it appears ‘banning bikini waxes’ involves requiring some sort of extra licensing to perform them, rather than just a cosmetology license.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Ok is there anyone else besides me? I feel lonely in this internet thing.
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April 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
bdbd Wrote:
> topless Waffle House
IIRC a headline about Seattle, Naked at Waffle House
April 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
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