A female lawyer. 
You guys go ahead and make all the fun you want of complicated orders and high prices at Starbucks. But the truth is, until I walked into a Starbucks for the first time, I had never, never, ever actually liked or enjoyed a cup of coffee before. I am willing to pay the price for something that tastes good. All you “regular coffee” people can have all that bitter swill you want; I won’t miss a drop of it.
Another reason it doesn’t bother me to spend money at Starbucks is that I know they treat their employees and their suppliers well. They aren’t like Wal-Mart, making people around the world poorer and more desperate.
Fixins? I’ve got a mental image of beans, peas and corn in the coffee.
A barista in Italy is someone who works in a bar (cafe). They can serve you anything at all.
Tim Horton’s does have the best drip. And DONUTS. Hmmm. We don’t even have Dunkin Donuts out here in WA. :mad:
I must admit, I am sort of a complicated coffee person in my own house. We make our own lattes, straight 2 shots and milk for my husband, but mine has a bit of Trader Joe’s Vanilla Syrup (YUM!) cinnamon and fresh nutmeg on the top. Mine is still a lot cheaper than “those” places. And I think our espresso maker was like 50 bucks or less back in Chicago in 1999. Still going strong!
I meant milk/cream, syrups, and little candy pieces and such.
I’ll step right up to the edge of Great Debates and suggest to you that their business development strategies are downright ruthless. The image of a Starbuck’s on every corner came about because they like to oversaturate local markets, “intercept” foot traffic moving towards Mom & Pop stores, and even buy out the leases of smaller retailers.
Flip side: they make lots of profits and spend a portion of them on charities, and they do make nice with their suppliers. And gas station coffee ($0.69 for enough to drown a shetland pony) will always be around.
And every morning I drink a grande latte, so I guess I’ve voted with my wallet.
Point and the menu and order a pasta bowl!
A frind of mine suggests that Starbucks’ motto should be “Coffee for people who don’t like coffee.”
Black no sugar for me.
Allright,
I don’t drink coffee so this comes from a position of ignorance but I have some questions/observations.
After the milk, cream, candy, sugar, foam etc. is there any room left in a Threebucks cup for coffee?
Is it just a “milkshake for folks who think they drink coffee”.
The calorie count on this stuff must be amazingly high!.
Unclviny (who just doesn’t “get it”)
The super frapa moca chino drinks are milkshakes favoured with coffee. I don’t think anyone will be able to make much of an argument otherwise. Maybe there is not enough milk but it ain’t a cup o joe. But Lattes and capachinos have definite pre starbucks origins and contain reasonable amounts of coffee.
Someone’s spilling clothes all over their coffee. 
For those don’t like coffee, Starbucks is now serving ‘hot chocolate’. Apparently it is more like a hot chocolate bar. From here
hmmmm…I wonder if you could add a shot of espresso to that…
I heard an interview on NPR with some Starbuck’s exec a couple of years ago, and he addressed the issue of their “ruthlessness” in the market. My numbers below will be off because I don’t remember specifics, but the general ratio of the numbers will be correct. He said that when they started expanding, there were something like 400 non-Starbuck’s coffee houses in the US (not diners etc. that served coffee, but places with a mostly-coffee menu). When Starbuck’s opened their 2000th store, there were 16,000 competitors. They didn’t take over the market and drive out competitors; they created the market and it was allowing their competitors to spring up and flourish. I thought that was interesting since I regard them as an urban virus.
I saw a local news consumer spot that discussed the calorie count of Starbuck’s products and put their typical large frappa-whappa-dohickey about equal to a Whopper with fries and a cola. Pretty frightening since the coffee drink is pretty low on nutritional value even compared to fast food.
I’ve tried the Chantico. It was so sweet and rich that I had to dilute it with two cups of skim milk. Then it was yummy.
Starbucks has always served regular hot chocolate. Pretty good. They also sell teas and cider (which is also tasty). The chantico is just an ultra rich type of hot chocolate.
He’s correct. Without Starbucks, most of these people bashing it would still be sipping freeze dried Folgers. And while Starbucks is certainly aggressive in its location strategies, it’s nowhere near as destructive as people claim it to be. One chain even has a strategy to locate its shops as close to a Starbucks as possible.
What the heck, I’ll take a stab at an analysis. Where would the world be without pedantry?
Disclaimers:
- IANASBE. I welcome corrections and addenda from the professionals.
- I will make the totally arbitrary assumption that we’re looking to maximize the number of syllables it takes to order the drink.
- We’re using the standard lingo that the baristas use. (E.g., no fair saying “decaffeinated” to get three extra syllables.)
- I’ll limit myself to variations which result in a drink that might be remotely drinkable. One could order seventy-seven pumps of every flavor of syrup they have, but that seems a little excessive.
OK. We’ll start with the cup size – short, tall, grande, or venti. We’ll take “venti” for two syllables, bigger because there’s going to be a lot of stuff in this drink.
There are six boxes on the side of the cup: Decaf, Shots, Syrup, Milk, Custom, and Drink.
1 - Decaf. Sorry guys, to maximize your syllables, you’ll have to drink some decaf. You can increase the syllable count by ordering partial decaf, though. This fits with the next item, which is:
2 - Shots. Seven shots is a lot, but not unreasonable for a venti drink. Eleven shots, for one more syllable, would probably be excessive. I think “seven shots, three shots decaf” would be legal protocol. Nine syllables so far.
3 - Syrup. Lots of different flavors to choose from. Amaretto is probably about the best choice for four syllables. Syrups are measured one pump at a time, and I believe they accept half pumps, so “One and a half pump amaretto” is good for a total of nine more syllables.
4 - Milk. Two percent is the way to go here. You can also specify the temperature, which is good for lots of syllables. Initially I thought this would make all the iced drinks not worth considering, since “hundred and seventy degree” is worth eight syllables. But “Java Chip Frappuccino Light Blended Coffee” is worth twelve. You can’t order “extra foam” on a blended drink, but that still doesn’t quite close the distance. Also, the blended drinks take longer to make, which annoys the people behind you further.
5 - Custom. I confess that I don’t know the full spectrum of choices here. I know you can specify whipped cream or not, extra foam or not (for hot drinks), chocolate, caramel, sprinkles. Let’s get “no whip, extra chocolate, extra sprinkles” for eleven. Almost forgot sweeteners – “seven Nutrasweet” for five more.
6 - Drink. As I said above, “Java Chip Frappuccino Light Blended Coffee” is pretty hard to beat.
So, for a grand total of 49 syllables (and probably about seven bucks), you can get a
venti seven-shot three-shot-decaf one-and-a-half-pump amaretto two percent seven Nutrasweet no whip extra chocolate extra sprinkles java chip frappuccino light blended coffee.
Anything to eat with that? No? Thanks for waiting, and bon appetit.
I regret to inform you that this little skit Has Been Done, and is probably performed regularly across our great nation by smug folks who are rarely appreciated by the employees or the people waiting in line. If you aren’t interested in froo-froo coffee drinks, stay out of the froo-froo coffee drink store.
I’m a vanilla latte guy myself. I know, I should be ashamed not to be drinking my coffee black like real men, but I consider coffee a mere ingredient. I prefer cake to a mouthful of flour, too. I’m wimpy that way.
Anyway, regarding dragging out your order, I would suggest that one shouldn’t be allowed to specify multiple kinds of sugar/substitutes, such as “one packet of splenda and one packet of nutrasweet”; that would just be silly. Further, “two percent” is the default, as far as I know, so specifying it is redundant, and “nonfat” gets you almost as many syllables (but if there is such a thing as “half-skinny”, that’s even better). “Half-caf” is the same number of syllables as “decaf”, but takes a little longer to say (and, as a bonus, to make), and still wakes you up a little. “One and a half pumps” of syrup seems like cheating, too, since you could really draw it out by saying “one and three quarters pumps” or “one and thirteen sixteenths of a pump”.
By the way, does anyone actually order drinks with syrup and packets of sugar and/or substitutes such as nutrasweet?
Thanks for the pedantry. I tossed this answer to my “blog” and someone fired back “with a twist of lemon” (6). I don’t know whether or not this is a valid addition to the drink as it stands, since I don’t go to Star*ucks and at the place I go instead I only need to resort to “large, plain, black coffee” (5) when the “server” (2) – they have the self respect not to overinflate themselves by saying “barista” (3) – is new and doesn’t know what I mean when I say “coffee” (2).
I have stood behind people who simply state a cup size – and “small” is accepted as a substitute for “tall” at most Starbuckses – and they get the coffee of the day, black. No trouble at all.