# I give up on Starbucks **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 1, 2006, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940 "2006-01-01T10:04:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TygerDralion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e19adc/32.png) [@TygerDralion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TygerDralion)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/41 "2006-01-02T19:23:13Z")
This is why the “Joe Muggs” at the local Books-A-Million gets the business of the boyfriend and myself instead of Starbucks. (And the fact that the selection of my beverage of choice, hot tea, is much better there than Starbucks.) ~TygerD ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/42 "2006-01-02T19:46:58Z")
FWIW Cooks magizine did a taste test of coffee recently. Drinking the coffee black Starbucks came in 6th IIRC. Adding milk, Starbucks was first. I agree that Starbucks is in the milk selling business. Since I drink my coffee black, I don’t go to Starbucks much. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/43 "2006-01-02T19:57:13Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > But baristas should be trained in the basics, such as ensuring that freakin’ crema appears on each and every espresso you make. No amount of training would make that possible at Starbucks, though – with their roast, most of the cafeol is burned off the bean before the poor barista has a hand in it. Not even a perfect ristretto can extract what isn’t there. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/44 "2006-01-02T22:35:41Z")
And in other news concerning the megalith coffee concern, they just won a lawsuit in China over [trademark infringement](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2004-02/05/content_303407.htm). Humph. That’s the story. Here’s the [winning the verdict story.](http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10682847/). ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/45 "2006-01-02T22:48:21Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > The scene is downtown Madrid, Spain, approximately 8 PM in early October. > > At a loose end, I wander into a Starbucks (I want to call it an Estarbuques) and scan the menu. No beverage is below €2, and they’re the same as they are in North America. > > I leave in a pique, go next door to the independent café that I really should have gone into in the first place, and get a really, really stellar café con leche for €1.50. How do you make the little euro symbol? ---
**Author:** ![Leviosaurus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Leviosaurus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leviosaurus)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/46 "2006-01-02T23:41:26Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > Good coffee – but you wouldn’t call it the _best_ if you compared it with [Cafe San Miguel](http://www.levelground.com/cafesanmiguel.php), which gives me a reason to get up in the morning. I’ll give it a try. I’m dubious, though - it doesn’t mention on the site if they’re arabica beans. Are they? According to my foody friend (who may be entirely wrong,) Cafe Mam gets roasted in Eugene, Oregon, when the orders come in. If he’s right about this, it means I get it within 48 hours of roasting. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can tell you those beans have more oil on them than any I’ve ever seen. I freeze it immediately and take it out a bit at a time - I’ve literally had people show up at my house just hoping I was making a pot they could hit off. The stuff is like crack. I notice that Cafe San Miguel is in the same co-op as Cafe Mam. They’re probably quite similar. Have you tried Cafe Mam? For the rest of you rolling your eyes at this - Cafe Mame is about $30 for a 5 pound bag. That comes to around $6 per pund. Compare that to Tully’s or Charbucks, at $8 or $9 per pound, and they aren’t even in the same class as this stuff. You owe it to yourself to give it a try. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/47 "2006-01-02T23:50:07Z")
> [@Leviosaurus](#): > > According to my foody friend (who may be entirely wrong,) Cafe Mam gets roasted in Eugene, Oregon, when the orders come in. If he’s right about this, it means I get it within 48 hours of roasting. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can tell you those beans have more oil on them than any I’ve ever seen. **I freeze it immediately and take it out a bit at a time** - I’ve literally had people show up at my house just hoping I was making a pot they could hit off. The stuff is like crack. > (snipage) Aaaaack! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/48 "2006-01-02T23:57:41Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > I’m not really sure what to add to this except yeah, Starbucks sucks. It totally baffles me how a company that large can make that much money on _bad coffee_. Now, I’m a bit of a coffee snob and I’ll only drink espresso from a few places. But I’ll drink any brewed coffee I can get my hands on- I think Denny’s coffee is the bee’s knees. But Starbucks coffee is just unusually and noteably bad. > > The price doesn’t help. I went in to find some hot eggnog and nothing on the menu was under four bucks. Four bucks is about what I want to spend on lunch, not on a glass of milk. Thank god for living somewhere where there are other options. This, I agree with. I tend not to like French roast at all; I don’t think replacing coffee’s natural volatile oils with charcoal improves the beverage in the slightest. But you simply can’t get a cup of brewed coffee at Starbucks that doesn’t taste noticeably over-roasted. I’m sure for people who only enjoy dark roasts, Starbucks must be nice, but for the rest of us with slightly more discerning palates, uck. Cheap grocery store coffee ain’t great, but it doesn’t have the objectionable taste of blackened beans that were roasted far too hot. ---
**Author:** ![Leviosaurus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Leviosaurus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leviosaurus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/49 "2006-01-03T00:06:33Z")
> [@Seven](#): > > Aaaaack!:eek: No way, man. I’m not leaving five pounds of coffee sitting out, it takes me three months to drink all of it. I don’t care what anyone says, whole beans are preserved better that way in my experience. Yeah, people freak out about my Cuban cigars in the refrigerator, too. 😃 When you smoke 'em at a rate of one every two years, they just don’t last in a makeshift humidor unless it’s cold. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/50 "2006-01-03T00:22:55Z")
> [@Leviosaurus](#): > > I notice that Cafe San Miguel is in the same co-op as Cafe Mam. They’re probably quite similar. Have you tried Cafe Mam? Yup! My friend Roxanne gets it in mail-order, and she makes a good cuppa. Cafe San Miguel is definitely a nice arabica. I guess the main difference is where it’s grown. From what I’ve seen, the San Miguel is oilier than the Cafe Mam – but I don’t know how much that has to do with how far it’s been shipped after roasting, or even what quantity my friend buys in or how long she keeps it around. It seems possible that surface oils might be reabsorbed after a while. I didn’t realize that the Mam was so much cheaper, though. It looks like it may be more economical to go that route, even with shipping. (Used to paying $12CDN per pound.) ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/51 "2006-01-03T13:58:17Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > The price doesn’t help. I went in to find some hot eggnog and nothing on the menu was under four bucks. Four bucks is about what I want to spend on lunch, not on a glass of milk. You can knock the taste of Starbuck’s all you want, because obviously that’s subjective, but I hate these threads where everyone insists that a “cup of coffee at Starbuck’s is four bucks.” **No, it isn’t.** A plain old cup of coffee at Starbucks is just over a dollar. Sure, you get it cheaper at the gas station or 7-11, but where I live, I can get a plain old cuppa Joe for about $1.20 at Starbucks. It’s the fancy coffee-and-milk concoctions with syrup and whipped cream that are three or four bucks. And I’m pretty sure the muffins aren’t four dollars, either. And you can ask for a small, medium or large without any snide looks from the barista, too. You don’t _have_ to ask for a grande or venti anymore. When they first exploded all over the lanscape, they tried to impose their snooty Italian sizing names on us, but not anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/52 "2006-01-03T14:37:38Z")
> [@Seven](#): > > Today, after their “barista” remade my drink for the third time, I walked out and tossed it straight into the bin outside. It tasted like crap. Take some old soy milk, overpull a few shots of ground beans found on the floor and cook the mixture just shy of boiling. eeergh. Pfft. Ever tried to milk a soy bean? Getting your fingers around their tiny nipples isn’t easy, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/53 "2006-01-03T16:13:31Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#): > > You can knock the taste of Starbuck’s all you want, because obviously that’s subjective, but I hate these threads where everyone insists that a “cup of coffee at Starbuck’s is four bucks.” > **No, it isn’t.** A plain old cup of coffee at Starbucks is just over a dollar. Sure, you get it cheaper at the gas station or 7-11, but where I live, I can get a plain old cuppa Joe for about $1.20 at Starbucks. Right. But you have to keep in mind that Starbucks played a pretty central role in making cafés ubiquitous in the United States; before that, the notion of a four dollar coffee beverage _was_ pretty outré. Starbucks does indeed offer brewed coffee for far cheaper (as do all cafés) but if it weren’t for them, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to most people in the United States at least to buy coffee and milk for $3.75. > [@](#): > > And you can ask for a small, medium or large without any snide looks from the barista, too. You don’t _have_ to ask for a grande or venti anymore. When they first exploded all over the lanscape, they tried to impose their snooty Italian sizing names on us, but not anymore. Has anyone _ever_ had a problem just ordering a small, medium, or large at any café? Because Starbucks is not the only place with weird sizing names, and I’ve never bothered to do learn them at any café. I don’t get why people seem to be so offended by the funny size names, when no employee has ever so much as blinked at me for ordering a “small” or a “large”. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/54 "2006-01-03T16:41:47Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > I’m with you. Only started drinking coffee a few years ago, and I started with Frappuccinos. Now I’ve got a serious reputation for showing up to work with a BrewKeg 52 Oz. container filled with about 40 Oz of coffee and 10-12 Oz of ice. Puh-lenty of non-dairy creamer, flavored hazlenut. OOOoo! I was just musing about how my travel mug only holds one big cup of coffee. (Single cup on the office Flavia machine, plus Coffeemate Hazelnut creamer to cool it down). I must upgrade to the kind of container you describe here. I do like the cold mocha drinks at Starbucks, but then I love most things artificial-tasting. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/55 "2006-01-03T20:45:44Z")
Meet [The Bubba Keg](http://www.printablepromotions.com/NewProducts/NewProducts1-04/BubbaKeg.jpg), othewise known as The Brew Keg, and an orange or green abomination sold by Home Depot. Made by the same company, quite a few outlets are using them for advertising. This thing keeps ice icy for hours, and hot hot for hours. Mmmmm. And, and, it’s the source of relentless ridicule ! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/56 "2006-01-03T22:38:59Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Settle down, you two, or I’m gonna make you both switch to decaf. Just don’t order it from Starbucks. On Christmas eve, my sister-in-law offered to go out and pick up coffee from Starbucks, so I ordered a decaf. She returns with a venti that I proceed to drink leisurely. As I am draining the cup, I start to get this incredible rush, the likes of which I haven’t felt in over eight years, since I dropped caffeine. I might as well have snorted a gram of Peruvian Pink, as it felt as though my heart was going to leap out of my chest. I checked the cup, which was clearly marked “decaf”, yet my symptoms put the lie to that. For the next two hours, I was grinding my teeth. Bastards can’t even get a simple decaf right. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/57 "2006-01-04T16:21:21Z")
Hey, just yesterday, I got some FREE ground coffee from my local Starbucks! How could anyone complain about that? …well, the problem was that the ground coffee was in the bottom of the bag that they put my scone in. Nothing like a pastry half-covered in coffee grounds for breakfast! ---
**Author:** ![parsnip](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parsnip/32/4564_2.png) [@parsnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/parsnip)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/58 "2006-01-05T04:12:55Z")
I have been reprimanded for ordering a “large black ice tea unsweet” at 4 different major metropolitan area stores. My Brownie parents keep giving me Starbucks cards as leader appreciation gifts and it takes me all year to use them up because I can’t be bothered to be corrected. They do have the nicest quality straws in FF land, though. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/59 "2006-01-05T07:17:25Z")
I loved Starbucks in the '70s when they had one store on Capital Hill in Seattle. They sold bulk tea, spices and coffee. They didn’t charge much for a cuppa. (either coffee or tea) The people that ran it were knowledgable. I learned how to store coffee beans from them and bought my first grinder there. sigh. I’m so old. ---
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940/60 "2006-01-05T07:33:19Z")
> [@picunurse](#): > > I loved Starbucks in the '70s when they had one store on Capital Hill in Seattle. They sold bulk tea, spices and coffee. They didn’t charge much for a cuppa. (either coffee or tea) The people that ran it were knowledgable. I learned how to store coffee beans from them and bought my first grinder there. > sigh. > I’m so old. Is that one still there? Even if it has been transformed into a modern day Starbucks… that might be cool to see. [sub]You remember you made a Ballard joke many threads ago, about shutting your coat into your car door so you could fit in? My husband recently explained that one to me, since I’m not a local. So, a belated HAHAHA! That’s cute! 😉 [/sub] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-give-up-on-starbucks/337940.md?page=4)