Yes they do. It’s a dollar-something.
Now this is something that surprised and amazed me on my first visit to the USA.
As a dedicated black coffee drinker I was looking forward to a good strong cup in a land of coffee drinkers, man was I ever dissapointed.
What’s more on subsequent visits I’ve still yet to find a place that sells a decent cuppa java.
IMHO the best coffee is in France…God it hurt to say that 
I’ve had Starbucks coffee maybe two or three times in my life. The first time was, y’know, “Hey, new coffee shop.” The second and third times were purely to be social and polite, because the first time was enough to tell me that Starbucks is crap.
For my daily coffee, it has always been and likely will ever be the Canadian fixture Tim Horton’s. If I want something a bit more foofy, I’ll go to Second Cup, or if I just want something closer to home I’ll go to Pam’s, because at least they make a nice chai latte.
And this was exactly the problem.
(1) 99 percent of the people, never having had a “good” cup of coffee, didn’t know that they should go looking for it.
(2) It was too hard to find.
But it was still better than the coffee served in almost any fast-food joint, diner, doughnut shop, restaurant, or home, which is where most people had their coffee, not at the rare good-coffee small coffee shop, press pot, Mediterranean coffee shop, or small batch roaster. Those kind of places essentially constituted a subculture that was invisible to most people.
Prior to Starbucks, good coffee was the provenance only of the people “in the know.” Now, because of Starbucks, people not only know about good coffee, but they go looking for it. Starbucks’s success has created a previously non-existant mass market for better coffee.
Ignorance fought.
A recent survey in Canada asked people to blind judge the best cup of coffee from all chain/franchise type places. You’ll never guess who won. No, not Tim Hortons…
McDonalds! I’ll try to find a cite.
I’ve seen such surveys. And it surprises me. I’ve never had a McDonald’s coffee that tasted like anything other than cigarette ash dissolved in hot water.
But … McDolands uses that Higgins & Burke or Higgins & Magnum or some damn thing. I’ve had it maybe twice, and both times it tasted like fresh ground, dry roasted ass.
But it wasn’t “impossible” nor was the market “non-existant” - and for people in the know, it was EASIER to get a better cup of coffee than Starbucks serves prior to the Starbuck’s expansion. Starbucks brought up the bottom, but it made it difficult at the top to compete for good beans and customers. Those small coffee houses didn’t manage - by and large - to hang on.
Did anyone else think this was referring to Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, or am I the only idiot in the thread?
Yes, “coffee culture” is still new here. For years and years, we jokingly referred to Thailand as “the Land of Nescafe” (as opposed to the more common “Land of Smiles”). There has always been a type of coffee called “bag coffee,” which is this really strong stuff filtered through this bag that looks like an airport windsock, but it’s strictly Chinese. You could find it only in Chinatown or out-of-the-way neighborhood shops run by ethnic Chinese, and that was hardly convenient. And even the cans that it came in had all-Chinese writing, so clearly it came from that country and was aimed at non-Thais. Or you could hit the brunch buffets of the five-star hotels for some drip coffee, but that was pricey. I still vividly remember when the first Starbuck’s in Thailand opened, in mid-1998. It’s still there, the one in the main Central Department Store branch on Ploenchit Road. It was Hallelujah time, I’m telling ya!
And being over here so long, I never got caught up in the anti-Starbucks movement in the US that I read about while revelling in my precious long-awaited cappuccino. As well, I knew a married couple from Denver who lived in Indonesia for a while, and in 1999 the wife and her sister who was visiting traveled up the Malay Peninsula and met us in Bangkok. They’d always made a point in Denver of patronizing local coffee shops and shunning the big chains, but when they saw that Starbuck’s, they practically dropped to their knees.
But now coffee has become very fashionable with the in crowd, so maybe that’s why Starbucks has enjoyed a good degree of success here. They’re all over the country now. Some local copycat chains have even sprung up, and a couple of them are just as good too, such as Coffee World.
Apparently McDonalds Canada uses Mother Parkers.
Nah, you’re not an idiot. From what I can tell, that chain is rather limited in the US. (But we have that one here, too, but only a handful of outlets.)
Takes a sip of the mocha, speaks in the guy-from-Sideways voice:
-Tastes fine to me.
Dunno what this elusive “good” coffee you people are talking about is. Plus other coffee shops always seem to put crap like Hershey’s into their mochas. Being a chocolate snob rather then a coffee snob, Starbucks is fine by me.
My claim was that the mass market was non-existent.
Yep, for people in the know … the few, the proud, …
But the success of Starbucks has triggered mass-market competition for better coffee. We now have several entrants competing in that market, some of them better than Starbucks.
I just can’t get upset over the loss of a market that failed entirely to make me aware of its existence. I can appreciate Starbucks for opening up a market that I now enjoy.
Is this a recent thing? 'Cos last time I was in there and paid attention to the coffee (which admittedly could be more than a year ago) it was Higgins & Burke. I recall them making some kind of to-do several years back about this switch to a new coffee that was supposed to be buttloads better than their old swill.
To be fair, it did appear to involve butts.
McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts have always done well on such surveys in the US. Also, Krispy Kreme has upgraded its coffee in recent years.
Beats me. I just grabbed it from the McDonalds Canada website. I drink my coffee black, straight up, and McDonalds here does indeed have a fair cup o’ java.
There used to be one in the mall about ten minutes away from my house but it closed up shop at least five years ago. IIRC it was “Gloria Jean’s Coffee Bean.” I don’t drink coffee so I never set foot in it, but I thought it only sold beans rather than prepared coffee.
Still, odd that in a thread about coffee my brain would go to jeans rather than coffee.
Dunkin Donuts have spent years perfecting, then not changing a coffee for a market of people who love their coffee. Kind of a circular argument I know but It works. It’s a perfect all day coffee which starbucks or gourmet coffee isn’t. I remember as a kid every time we went fishing with dad, we would stop by Dunkin Donuts at like 6:30 in the morning and dad would get thermos full of the stuff.
And the Dunkin I used to live by that was just off the interstate? It was a constant backup of big rig truckers going in for a thermos and a pee.
Yes. That’s it exactly. I have had great coffee in Dunkin’ Donuts at all hours of the morning. Maybe it was fresh, maybe not, but it was really good. No, Starbucks et al coffee is to be enjoyed in the moment; you cannot put it in a thermos and tote it around. Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, as well as that of many a diner, has a special flavor.