I prefer that my coffee be made by true professionals.
Stranger
You are right about “a world in which good coffee more or less didn’t exist”, analogous to the reason McDonald’s was successful in the 1950’s (you could eat there, know what you were getting, and not gamble with food poisoning!). It’s not that it was “swill”, it was just never very good or worth the price.
I have never tried “Starbuck’s Reserve”. I did just buy “high quality premium” cold-brewed coffee from a completely local, non-chain cafe and it was really good, expensive though, not sure where I can get “high quality premium” coffee cheaply.
Vincent and I would have been satisfied with some freeze-dried Taster’s Choice, and you spring this gourmet shit on us.
When I say, “Starbucks always sucked”, I don’t just mean that their coffee is swill; I didn’t and still don’t like it but I’m sure it is an adequately cromulent product that meets their corporate quality control standards. I mean that Starbucks as a company has always sucked. It is a hyper-growth-oriented franchise which appealed to the common denominator even while it tried to maintain the pretense of being a premium product, and its over-sugared flavor-infused drink products are the McDonalds Combo Meal of coffee, chock full of flavors engineered to stimulate your neurotransmitters while providing nothing that a dietician would consider to be of any nutritional value. Their treatment of “partners” was always manipulative and full of pandering language, and as a franchiser they followed the path of enlisting franchise owners in onerous contracts that penalized them for any deviation from the norm or downturn in business while opening up competing outlets in close proximity to one another in a pitted battle that ensured that both lost but the corporation gets its vig regardless.
Fuck Starbucks with a Frappuccino Venti…all twenty-four ounces of it.
Stranger
I had it many years ago and felt bad for the employees because it tasted burnt. Then I found out it was supposed to taste like that.
To each his own. I like the coffee at the local gas station better and it’s $1. They have a machine that grinds it for each cup. Somehow the machine manages not to burn it. And I use my own thermos mug so it’s environmentally friendly. And they have a bathroom and everything.
Oh yes, I agree with this!
Their house brew used to be a darker roast–over-roasted or “burnt” in the opinion of many people, I would more or less agree with that. But they knew of this perception and replaced it with Pike Place, a medium roast, as their standard brew in 2008. They even came out with blonde roast, which is definitely not burnt. Still, even though 12 years have past, you’ll still hear a lot of people say that Starbucks coffee “tastes burnt.”
The gas station machine isn’t going to burn the coffee, since such burning would take place in the roasting process, not the brewing.
But I hear you. Sometimes ordinary places can do good work. I’m more of a tea freak, and sometimes ordinary restaurants and even chains have very delicious, strong iced tea.
I don’t drink coffee and never purchased anything from a Starbucks. From the very beginning I have heard that they were expensive. That idea became part of popular culture. How could they now suddenly be too expensive when everyone always complained about the cost or were actually bragging that they could afford to waste money on Starbucks coffee?
Pre - plague years, when people had money to throw away on expensive coffee, Starbucks was a “thing”. Its not a ‘thing’ any more, when gas is almost $5 a gallon and there are shortages of more useful food and drink. Starbucks is on a downward spiral. Real people working hard for their money might not want to loiter about a hoity toity coffee shop spending $$$ . There are probably more less pretentious Dunkin Donuts - even McDonalds.
How do you go about reconciling seemingly contradictory issues like:
- Starbucks is mean to its workers and exploits them
- I object to paying more for coffee than I did before covid
- I want service quality but I don’t want to patronise their stores except to use their toilet?
There’s a few dozen stores in Australia, but there’s a strong cafe culture here which they’ve never cracked, so they’re mainly in malls and cinema precincts rather than as travel stops and have strong competion from proper coffee joints. Can’t say I’ve ever been impressed by either the ethos or the offering.
I don’t think there is a contradiction, overall. It crossed a line at some point where it felt too expensive and depressing to visit. Also, when I have used the toilet, I have made a purchase (maybe once or twice the line was so long I didn’t).
Yes, the worst vitriol I’ve seen against Starbucks was on some Australian board–this was about 10 years ago. People really were calling it undrinkable swill and whatnot. It was a bit OTT.
Starbucks isn’t dominant in every market in the US, either. It’s rather weak in the state of Michigan, where the Biggby chain is the major player.
Coffee is the excretion of the Devil, They should have never changed the original sign, that stupid fish market is completely overratted, pro football is vastly inferior to college, the BMW e30 is the best car ever made, blonds DON"T have more fun, That fifth dentist is an asshole just being contrary and Disneyland is not the happiest place on Earth. Ummm… Bacon!
If you don’t mind me asking, which one? Unicorn Cafe? Cafe Express? Kafein? There was a fourth one at that time that closed shop around 94 or 95 whose name I forget. I believe all these are gone now. Unicorn closed permanently in 2020. Kafein in 2008. Express was … 2008? I worked at Express ‘95-‘97. I miss all these places and still keep in touch with the old crew and some patrons (even shot one of my coworkers weddings in 2019.) Such great connections and bonding at the local joints.
I loved Dunkin Donuts coffee until I watched them make it. The secret ingredient was a pound of sugar. If they had to list ingredients on the container coffee would not be the first thing listed.
Interesting. I never heard this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Starbucks commercial so they haven’t done much in the way of advertising their way out of a misconception.
I lived on Main St. and it was right down the street… Main St. runs north-south, right, so it would have been on the west side of the street. I think the kitcheny part was on the north end of the space. The name Unicorn rings a bit of a bell.
I would go for live music and stuff. One guy I remember played the bass and sang. The bass was perhaps fretless, but it had a really cool look, with like no keys on top to tune the strings and a kind of diamond-shaped bottom. Very “modern”-looking. He was quite good! It’s a performance that has always stuck in my mind…
Meanwhile in Italy, where the usual price for a coffee is €1 ($1.07), a customer called the police on a coffee bar for charging him €2. The bar was fined for not conspicuously displaying its prices.
I’ve cut way back on caffeine intake, so when I do drink coffee I want it to be incredible. I drink a cup maybe once a month after a fine meal, often in the form of an Irish Coffee.
The exception to my rule is when we’re on vacation in St Martin. Excellent coffee is the rule there. I can get an espresso at a beach bar complete with a curl of lemon peel that beats anything served in the US. My porcelain cup is preheated, crema is perfect, etc, all at a beach bar.
Of course, the business model is “sell an addictive product and market it to teenagers”.