I’m starting to get a Yogi Berra-ish nobody-goes-to-Starbucks-anymore vibe from some posts in this thread, though Starbucks’ bottom line seems to be in reasonably good shape.
I’d be surprised at this unless there’s a secret trial of “sweet coffee” going on in the South to complement the plague of “sweet tea”. All the Dunkin Donuts coffee I’ve had (including lately) has been unsweetened like everyone else’s.
I’m not sure where @Magiver is from, but in Beantown (and environs), “Coffee, regular” (at DD) tends to have a fair amount of both cream and sugar:
I think it’s a New England caffeine shibboleth.
That was Cafe Express South. It was on a corner of a largish apartment building. (Main runs East-west on a very slight slant.) I worked at the bigger one on Dempster. (Even had a smoking section back then, which is odd to think about now.) Unicorn was in downtown Evanston. I remember when Starbucks opened up a block away from us c.1995 on Dempster and some of the discussion about it. It definitely did eat into some of our business with the casual coffee goers.
I did live downtown. “Cafe Express South” doesn’t ring a bell, but I could be wrong!
Starbucks is the #2 fast food chain in the country, after McDonald’s:
It’s crazy how many units they have.
Edit: This has them at #3 in 2020. I believe they are 2 or 3 right now:
I meant like towards the main business strip near campus, like near Davis/Church & Sherman. Express South did become Brothers K Coffeehouse, but that was a little later, I want to say early 2000s. 500 Hinman, same block as the popular diner Lucky Platter. It was still Express when I left Evanston in 1998. I think it had been there since around like 1991. (ETA: October 1989, according to the Trib. The Dempster location, Evanston’s first coffeehouse, opened around 1982 according to the same article I found.)
Weird. I’ve never heard the expression “coffee regular” at DD or anywhere else. When ordering coffee I’ve been asked if I want sugar and typically say, yes, a packet on the side. But to someone accustomed to getting presweetened coffee it shouldn’t be surprising that yes, there’s sugar already in it.
I was about to say, it’s not Subway? It’s #8 on that list. But Subway is number one on the next list. Probably ranked by slightly different criteria.
I’ve always associated that order with New York (over here in Chicago, “regular” would most likely be interpreted as “black,” or at least that’s how I would have interpreted it before learning of the term from a New Yorker friend, and seeing it here on the Dope), but it looks like it covers a little more geographical ground.
For me, an expensive cup of coffee is the rent I pay for an hour in a relatively clean relaxation/work space with essential facilities (restroom and Wi-Fi). A Starbucks drive-thru or take-out makes no sense to me; the coffee from a gas station serves the same purpose for a quarter the price.
Apparently a regular coffee has cream and sugar up and down the east coast. I can only go from what people tell me, you couldn’t pay me to touch that stuff.
It is different here in RI than in the normal world. We have more Dunkin Donuts per capita than any other state. We’ve changed the name of the state recently and it’s been proposed that we just change it to the State of Dunkin and try to get some more money out of them. So coffee from an unspecified source means Dunkin around here.
It never fails, and you can start before they become teenagers. It’s tradition to serve CoffeeMilk at the schools in Rhode Island. Notice the product proclaims it is The Official State Drink of Rhode Island.
Nobody freak out though, it doesn’t have as much caffeine as coffee does. Of course kids are smaller than adults, does that matter? 
Right, I used to eat at Lucky Platter at least once a week! I went back a couple years ago and… the polenta was NOT as good! Bummer.
Wait, so I could have met you in real life at Express, 1994-1995?!
I actually subscribe to the Restaurant Business email, and their Top 500 for 2022 just came in!
Subway is #8 now.
Apparently this is by sales, but Subway still has the highest unit count. But that unit count still fell by 5% in the period they’re looking at.
Reading this thread makes me very happy that Tim Horton’s opened franchises on this side of the border.
There’s always this:
You couldn’t be more wrong. Haven’t set foot in a McShitalds in years. I visit Starbucks only when it’s the only option. My preference are the small independent coffee stands.
I don’t dispute your premise, but I’ll nitpick that I don’t think Starbucks does franchises. Googling confirms this, sort of. You can apparently franchise a Starbucks outside of the U.S.
I find myself puzzled by the lack of a standard menu at Starbucks. Some places can make a grilled cheese, some locations cannot. But all in all, the coffeehouse concept has been abandoned in favor of just an expensive fast-food place. The seating is nothing special. The noise is too high. It seems most people come in, grab something and go.
Technically store owners are “licensees” in the United States and Canada. However, unlike many license agreements that are just branding and sales agreements, Starbucks license agreements give the corporation extensive control over how the licensee can operate without any obligation to the licensees, including arbitrarily yanking licenses over minor or manufactured issues. Since Starbucks isn’t really in the real estate business so they don’t have an interest in actually owning physical stores; the corporation does own a handful of ‘flagship’ storefronts outright for promotional reasons but doesn’t act as a financier and lease-owner the way McDonalds frequently does with its franchises.
However, “partner” in the context of the post you reference is actually how they refer to service employees, who they shine in with a bunch of bullshit about how much they care, provide some minimum of benefits, et cetera. The corporation, of course, doesn’t give a flying fuck about store workers who are employed by licensees save for the public perception that it is a more generous work opportunity than other fast food places, which again is all about maintaining an upscale image. The recent ‘brouhaha’ over unionization by service employees of individual stores has brought this into the public sphere, no doubt much to the distaste of Starbucks corporate executives and board members because while they don’t want to be seen as union-busters they want to be able to promote the financial advantages of selling more licenses to open more stores so they can meet their aggressive growth targets, and higher wages make that seem less appealing to potential licensees.
Stranger