I personally am not a fan of coffee in general. I’ll drink it, but unless it is really horrible, I can’t tell “good coffee” from “bad coffee”.
However, my wife and mother-in-law love coffee, and they are fans of Starbucks coffee (allegedly since they changed their process a few years ago). They don’t get “coffee drinks” or those “milkshakes with some coffee in” they sell – just regular coffee, and they prefer Starbucks for it.
I was always of the opinion that their roast tasted burned opinion from early experiences. It’s really the only coffee shop nearby for my out of the house during the job hunt time though. The normal roast is still a bit like that although not as bad as I remember. I mostly avoid it. Some of their dark roasts are pretty good though. It depends on which they have open on a given day.
I know Juan Valdez.
He’s very busy.
This is the exact opposite of how I feel. I find DD coffee to be watery and weak, Starbucks to be rich and flavorful. FWIW, I take it black, no sugar (and certainly no syrupy crap!)
I think this thread will lead us to the startling conclusion that different people like different things.
Sometimes I feel like I’m invisible on this board.
13 posts after mine, and not one has bothered to answer my question. 
Sometimes I honestly wonder if anybody even reads my posts.
It certainly did that in Australia last year, when they shut more than 60 of about 80 outlets here with a loss approaching $150 million.
While there were claims it was a perceived dislike of American brands [a big surprise to zillionaire Maccas and KFC franchisees], it was mainly that its possible to buy a high quality cup of espresso coffee made by a well-trained barista for $3. At Starbucks you were paying a lot more for something that was just added fat and sugar disguising a mediocre coffee base.
I tried Starbucks before they came here. I was genuinely horrified at the syrupy sweetened hot milk gak that they sold me. Maybe we’re lucky in having lots of southern European migrants who introduced proper espresso coffee 50 years ago, and a buoyant enough economy that can keep a bunch of small independently owned cafes viable in any large shopping strip.
Their ‘espresso’ is a horror . . .
I have found their coffee to be mediocre at best. I find both McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts coffee to be generally superior.
SB has always had very meh “coffee,” which is why they can only sell it if it’s 50% ice cream.
I find it odd that McD’s has such consistently good (but never great) coffee, given that it’s done like everything else in their operation: by the megabuttload, by the book and for maximized profit.
That’s not how it works. The more addicted you become to caffeine, the more willing to consume any sort of swill that contains caffeine you become.
The narrowing you refer to is the eventual pushing out of everything that is not related to the addiction.
QtM, practitioner of addiction medicine.
Who said that?
I wonder why no-one has mentioned their Guatemalan coffee.
Coffee makes people mean. QED. 
I started on my long trek down coffee road with Starbucks, really, so I can’t say I hate them, but compared to so many other coffees I’ve had, it’s not just good coffee. They’re better than some, but worse than “good.”
I credit Starbucks, however, with creating the coffee craze that has really created the market for much better coffees and now we have little coffee shops all over the place that get very carefully chosen beans and carefully made roasts from all over the place.
I prefer filter/drip/pour over coffee and I am not a fan of espresso, but I’ll have it sometimes. Starbucks uses a highly automated espresso-making process and it produces a rather poor-quality product.
As far as ranking, from best to worst:
— Specialty coffee houses that acquire carefully chosen and made roasts, many of them single-source
— Chains like Peet’s, Caribou, etc., among which I would rank Starbucks at the bottom.
— Keurig and other similar convenience-device coffees and fully automated espressos.
— Fast food swill like Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s. Every cup of McDonald’s coffee I’ve ever had has tasted like an ash tray
— Diner and food service coffee, which, really is the kind of coffee that was almost exclusively available in most of the United States before the Starbucks-fueled boom. This includes the Folger’s and Maxwell House-grade coffee made in your standard drip coffee maker at home or in the office.
There are Guatemalan coffees that among my favorite. But labeling coffee with a name of a country is pretty misleading. Just because two coffees are from Guatemala doesn’t mean they will be of the same quality.
The source of SB coffee is often masked by its route to the customer. If it’s not well-roasted, well-brewed and delivered naked into the customer’s cup, it matters less and less what the provenance and pedigree of the beans is.
Guatemalan is not all that exotic if you have a good coffee supplier at hand. To rely entirely on what a chain will brew and serve is pretty limiting. Any good small-batch roaster will have 20 or 30 options.
Myself, I find the African and Indonesian beans far better than anything from South America. SA became known as a source for relatively cheap beans of fairly mild varieties, and its “better” grades are only so in relation to the bulk stuff they produce.
Try Tanzanian Peaberry or Kenya AA some time. Our house coffee is half TBP, half Sumatran decaf. (sips) (tries to remember one of the stupid coffee commercial catch lines) (fails)
Horrible ! I only had it once , I asked for hazelnut coffee and said I never had their coffee before and wanted to know if it was sweet . I was told “No” , I got it with NO sugar and a little cream . It tasted like pure sugar and was bitter too. I didn’t know they added the flavor by using a sugary syrup . It would had been nice if the jerk told they used a sugary syrup . CRAPPY overprice coffee !
I drink Starbucks because I have friends that like it. So if I go out for coffee with them, it’s a Starbucks. Like some of the others, I find most of their stuff too bitter. I get the blonde roast, and take it black.
At work, we have one one of those Starbucks machines - three types of beans at the top. Touch screen to select which you want. It grinds and delivers. It’s ok. More importantly, it’s the only coffee I can get without taking a walk to the hotel next door.
Right now I"m drinking Dunkin Donut’s coffee, home made in my french press.
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 Starbucks in Thailand opened, in May 1998. 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 reveling 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 Starbucks, 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 – 169 outlets nationwide, according to their website, and who knows how long it’s been since the website was updated.
Like a lot of people, I don’t like Starbucks coffee. Their business model is successful because they are everywhere, so if you’re in a hurry and need some caffeine, it’s fast and convenient. I think I read that their profit (or maybe it was cash flow) over the past three years was in the billion dollar range.
Dear everyone that hates “bitter” “burnt” Starbucks coffee… Next time you are forced to go there (work friends want to go there or whatever) order an Americano. Treat it just like you would treat a coffee. I bet you like it.
It’s not the worst, but I’d only ‘choose’ it out of necessity or convenience.