I got up close and personal with two separate Swedish hospitals over the period of a couple of months this summer.

I have to say that whoever came up with the idea of putting Starbucks coffee bars in the lobby of main hospitals is an absolute fucking genius for a number of reasons.

First, and most obviously, financial.
Any time, and I do mean ANY. TIME. I’ve been at either Swedish First Hill or Swedish Cherry Hill this year the Starbucks has had a line. My understanding is that the Cherry Hill Starbucks doesn’t operate 24 hours a day and I’m not *positive* that the First Hill Starbucks does (although they were open and hopping when we got there for surgery at too-damn-early A.M. on August 26th) but that’s beyond the point. Every time we were at a Swedish hospital with a Starbucks that Starbucks was SRO.
These branches aren’t making a major part of Starbucks’ profit over all, but I’m sure they are high performers in the “average daily take” sweepstakes.

Secondly from a psychosocial aspect.
No one except the employees that is in a hospital on any given day is there without stress, anxiety, fear, pain, grief, or angst. An easy, calm, every day experience -smell, interaction, taste- is a great appeal to the basic nature of such a discombobulated person. Hospital Starbucks don’t cure all ills, but having a slice of what to many people is every day life in an environment where pretty much nothing is an every day experience is, again, fucking genius.

And finally from a marketing standpoint.
Hospital food isn’t, popular myths aside, worse than any other institutional cafeteria food. It’s just really hard to make food that is produced to appeal to the palates of the largest number of people taste like anything other than mass produced food. Granted that Starbucks’ food (coffee, juices, etc. etc. etc.) aren’t much less mass produced than that which you would get at the hospital cafeteria, but the difference is that Starbucks is trying to make a profit off of their products. Not that the food conglomerates that manage hospital cafeterias aren’t interested in making profits, but they’re making profits off of a captive audience. Their mass produced food can be as run-of-the-mill as hell and they’ll still make a profit so long as they’re not actually poisoning people. Starbucks, regardless of where their outlets are placed, is trying to attract people who have an option of where to spend their, let’s call a spade a spade, fast food money. The bottom line being that if you have a captive population and that population has the option of choosing your packaged but familiar in taste and quality foods (even if they are only marginally better than the alternative) over taking a chance with cafeteria style “cooked right here!” (cough) food, a large portion of them are going to go with what’s familiar. And they’ll knock you down to get to it. The quality of the food has a certain amount to do with the financial success of these hospital based Starbucks outlets I’m sure. I am, however cynic enough to feel that many people would opt for Starbucks’ products even if they were dreck given the choice between a hospital’s cafeteria and a familiar “non-hospital experience” option. It’s all about the marketing.