I like their coffee. Mostly their darker roasts. Back in the day, I didn’t used to like Peet’s: found it too burnt tasting. Now I like their coffees too. I think as my tastes have developed in coffee, I have moved away from milder roasts to more robust ones.
I’ve never actually had their coffee because it always smells burnt. I’m hardly a coffee snob but if I’m at a gas station and it’s burnt I dump it and walk away.
We have a number of really good coffee houses in my town and you can order it black from any of them and it tastes good so it’s not some kind of secret blend.
We also have a gas station chain headquartered in my area that’s having coffee issues. They weakened their regular coffee to the point its colored water and then cam back with a an espresso machine where you can gets shots dumped into your regular coffee that makes it taste like… coffee. I think it’s in the testing stage. They could cut out the expensive machine and the time wasted and just add more coffee grounds but what do I know.
I love me some coffee. I come from Norwegian roots. We were given coffee before kindergarten. Starbucks is the worst coffee ever. My ignorant children think its the nuts. They know nothing of coffee. I have never been able to drink a whole Starbucks coffee even when I’m at the dang airport at Oh dark thirty in the morning. I buy it, think: yeah coffee, then sip it and toss it. Bleh.
Starbucks coffee and food are mediocre, but the service and atmosphere can be good. It’s better than Tim Horton’s and not as good as Timothy’s, Tim’s Coffee or Tim Tam Tim.
One of the worst coffee shops ever.
The few times I’ve had it Starbucks has tasted fine to me. Note that I don’t value coffee as an experiential drink whatsoever, and have no (and desire no) coffee palate. I drink it for a morning infusion of caffeine, and can and do drink basically coffee brewed with dirty water strained through old paper towels and am 100% fine with that.
My biggest objection to Starbucks is given my extremely unevolved coffee palate, I am fine with the very low quality coffee we can brew at work or in a moment of largesse the $1 coffee you can get from gas stations or fast food places. So there is little reason for me to patronize their business.
There is always a “Mitchell and Webb” sketch for any situation.
I’ve always considered my morning Starbucks stop a breather period before work, and my peppermint mocha a milk drink, not coffee.
Coffee is not really what Starbucks is selling. The idea was to have a European style cafe where you could hang out as long as you wanted. Most American fast food joints both before Starbucks and even now have a customer philosophy of “Eat your burger or chicken and get the fuck out.” They want turnover.
Starbucks is different in that you can sit and read, or surf the web, or write that novel, or play chess if you bring a pal. You can hold informal meetings for business, or meet your perspective online romance in person in a safe environment.
If you hang out at a neighborhood Starbucks enough to become a regular you can make all sorts of acquaintances, and have interesting conversations with people.
Plus they do treat their employees well, which is nice…and rare.
I like Starbucks. But their coffee straight does make me nauseous.
Their espresso is horrible!!
Is there a clear context for this POV? I am trying to recall.
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Has Starbucks’ coffee always been held up as bad? If not, what changed, when and why? Did they pass a certain size and sacrifice taste for consistency or something?
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As it was growing, how was the taste of its coffee regarded? I recall comments about how strong it was - statements about burning their coffee - but never remotely to the point of limiting their growth. I guess I took it as a coffee purist thing, like a wine person slamming Two-Buck Chuck.
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I know Starbucks is known for having a strongly-roasted-to-the-point-of-burnt aspect to their coffee. Was this considered cool and “real coffee-er” vs. Folger’s back in the day, but now can be evaluated against truly artisanal-type coffees? Were they an agent in their own demise by increasing coffee awareness?
I simply look at Starbucks as a coffee option. At home, I use Dunkin’ Dark. I notice that the SB is a bit more acidic. I guess I have assumed it was a flavor profile they chose because it worked for them.
Worst coffee ever?
Yes, they got to the point of being the largest chain of coffee stores in the whole world by selling the worst coffee ever. Of course.
I’m no particular fan of Starbucks, but seriously, if you think their coffee is the ‘worst ever’, you need to get out more.
My favorite Starbucks item is the chocolate covered espresso beans. I overdid it on those once, and thought my heart was going to explode. I also once got a really cool Bob Dylan CD there.
If there’s worse, maybe I don’t want to get out more. 
Disclaimer: I don’t drink coffee, I just wanted to make the joke.
I like Starbuck’s coffee. I don’t drink it often because I can’t handle the caffeine, and most places don’t seem to have brewed decaf. They offer to make a cup with a filter, but it doesn’t taste the same (too weak), and I don’t like having to pay more for a decaf Americano. Either way, no sugar, no flavouring, just coffee with cream, preferably the 18%.
Not a fan of Starbuck’s, when I have no other option it’s one of those “some coffee for your half and half?” situations.
However, the winner of the World’s Worst Coffee trophy goes to the McDonald’s in Smyrna, DE. Every time it was watery, bitter, burnt, and repeated on you for the rest of the morning. Why did we keep drinking it? To see if it was as bad as we remembered. :smack:
When it first expanded broadly, it represented a clear improvement over the vast run of fast-food coffee then available and the first exposure to espresso drinks (at least as a daily item rather than a special occasion) for a lot of people. It has always been mocked from both above and below, if you will. Many people who were accustomed to robusto coffee from the supermarket at home or in the breakroom found Starbucks’ drip coffee to taste unusually strong and “burned.” Many people who were accustomed to getting espresso in nice Italian restaurants or making it at home found Starbucks’ espresso to be poor quality. But the company definitely hit a quality point that was not then being served.
That Starbucks is now routinely described as downmarket is an aspect of its success in transforming the coffee market. They expanded the public’s taste profile in a way that created market niches for local boutique coffee shops to succeed with higher-end offerings.
Finally, don’t forget that Starbucks offers multiple varieties of drip coffee. Personally, I tend to find their dark roasts (Gold Coast, Komodo Dragon) “smoother” somehow, and their blonde roasts taste oddly nutty. But that’s just me, and you might find something different that you like better than the default offering.
My take:
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Starbucks Coffee has, since I remember encountering it first about 20 years ago, been regarded as middle-of-the-road to bad coffee by the coffee cognoscenti. I used to work in an independent coffeeshop for several years that served coffee made from a local roaster’s beans, and we all kind of hated them for their coffee, but especially their espresso.
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“Burnt” and “over-roasted” was (and apparently still is) a common complaint about their coffee. As you’ll see below, Starbucks did respond to that sentiment a few years ago.
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While I agree that this reputation was true, I don’t feel it still is true, which surprises me that people still find their coffee over-roasted. A few years back, responding to consumer sentiment that their coffee was over-roasted, they changed their house blend to Pike Place roast, which was a more medium-bodied roast. And they also have the Blonde, which is a very light roast, closer to donut shop coffee. I did not like their old house blend, but their Pike Place roast was absolutely palatable and fine middle-of-the-road coffee.
As for whether it was considered “cool” in the day, I can’t say. For my area, it was always the McDonalds of coffee and the cool cats went to the independent coffee houses. But I lived in an area that had those. Elsewhere, the reputation may have been different.
They also, of course, have the reputation of having very expensive coffee, which is not quite true. Their regular black coffee is the same price at about $2 as the same size at Dunkin Donuts. Their espresso drinks are the ones that get to the $4+ level that people complain about when they say it costs $4 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It does not.
And they also get slammed for having their naming system of “tall, grande, and venti” and people claim you have to order using their terminology. This is wrong. I always order a “large coffee” when I go there and I get a large coffee. Nobody forces me to use the word “venti.” There are humans behind the counter and they know what small, medium, and large means.
I still think their espresso is not very good and the only way to enjoy it is to drown it in milk & cream & stuff (which I don’t do), but their black coffee is perfectly serviceable middle-of-the-road coffee.
I drink my coffee black, and absolutely love Starbucks coffee. Then again, I also love IPAs with absurdly high IBUs, and sour beers that most people can’t handle.
:rolleyes: I have been to Starbucks hundreds of times and have never once experienced this. On the contrary, what I am almost always asked is if I need room for cream or not. Period.
With respect to all the people in this thread who complain that Starbucks’ coffee tastes burnt or overroasted, they now sell a so-called “blonde roast” in addition to their dark roast coffee.
Personally, I love their dark roast coffee, and I am someone that absolutely hates burnt coffee.
Years ago, I regularly drank McDonald’s coffee, and the only way I found it drinkable was if it had just been brewed (i.e. within the last few seconds). Commercial coffee that sits on a hot plate for more than a few minutes is awful, in my experience. One thing that Starbucks does is to brew its coffee into thermos-type carafes (with no hot plate) instead. For a short time, my local McDonald’s did this as well, but then went back to their traditional glass carafes and hot plates (undoubtedly to cater to customers whose only criteria for their coffee is for it to be served as hot as possible).
I missed that from the other poster. I don’t even know what additives there could be for coffee at the counter. The only question I’ve ever heard asked for an order of coffee (out of the 100 or so times I’ve been) is “room for cream?” (And if you just say “black coffee,” you avoid that question.) And you put in the cream and sugar yourself at the little cream/sugar station. When you order a coffee, you just get a black coffee–the difference is whether it’s filled to the top or not.