I almost never go to Starbucks so I’m totally unfamiliar with what’s usual there. But today I happened to be in a mall near closing and my wife wanted a decaf coffee to go.
So she ordered one. And the girl behind the counter - calling her a barista or whatever seems absurd - said that she would have to wait. It was Starbucks policy not to brew decaf except to special order after noon.
Huh? You don’t make decaf at night, the time when many people only drink decaf? You only make it before noon, the time when most people want caffeinated?
Is this really a general Starbucks policy? And if so, why? It seems so completely counterintuitive that there must be a powerful reason for it. I’ve certainly never heard of any other store that sells coffee doing this.
Posted in GQ since this is a policy question rather than a food issue, but feel free to move.
Not a coffee drinker or a Starbucks customer but I’ll take a WAG.
I’ll assume Starbucks sells more coffee in the morning than it does later in the day. So in the morning it make have more varieties ready to serve. Then as the customers thin out, it stops pre-brewing the less popular varieties.
So it’s not a case of having a no-caffeine at noon policy. It’s a case of having ten varieties ready at 8:00 AM and only three varieties ready at noon. And decaf was one of the seven varieties that got downgraded.
There are those of us who enjoy the taste of coffee, enjoy a hot drink in the afternoon, but can not have caffeine later in the day without disrupting our sleep at night.
While it is indeed “more likely” that people would want a pick me up with caffeine, there is still a market for those who don’t. Why not serve that market also?
Why? My dictionary defines “barista” as “person who serves in a coffee bar” and says the term originated in the 1980s. Do you not consider Starbucks to be a “coffee bar”?
I’ve gotten decaf at Starbucks well after noon on many occasions. I think Barista Girl just didn’t feel like making a full pot for one customer right then.
I don’t understand the hostility. What makes it a “fancy word”? The fact that Shakespeare didn’t use it? Is “bartender” a fancy word? After all, they just serve drinks, so they’re like waitresses, right? Do you call your bartender “waitress”?
As a decaf only drinker who frequents Starbucks (and other similar places) I too have experienced this same situation but it only takes between about 5 minutes to brew a “batch” of decaf and, frankly, I would much prefer the freshly brewed decaf than coffee that has been sitting on the coffee-maker for extended periods of time. I have never experienced a situation at Starbucks where they were not willing to put on a freshly brewed pot and have it ready within 5 minutes.
I suspect part of the problem of the OP may be the requirement of “instant gratification”! Whatever happened to a little patience (as stated above maybe 5 minutes)?
Why does anyone drink decaffinated coffee? Do people really like drinking that? Same with non alcoholic beer. It is not that the stuff tastes good, it’s the fact that it has something that will either keep you awake or gets you drunk. Coffee and alcohol to me are very similiar and enough caffiene will get you wired.
Starbucks can kiss my ass. They are like the Wal Mart of coffee houses, and because of this, most mom and pop coffee places with atmosphere goes under leaving this homogenized giant of nothingness. Their stuff is expensive and pretentious. “A double whipped lattee with a cherry and a sprinkling of brown sugar with a medium froth, sized Grande”. You know, get a life. It’s fk’ing coffee. Drink the shit black or with cream and sugar. Save the whip cream for the kiddies and sexual experimentation.
Starbucks now wants to sell sandwiches and beer. Now that might lure me in. Or not.
Any coffee place (or place that serves coffee) that gives you a decaf option on the menu, will give you a decaf at any hour that they are open; although if it is relatively rarely asked for at that location, they will likely not have it pre-brewed. Ordering a decaf, regardless of the reputation of of the establishment, will forever brand you as complete loser douchebag; unless you happen to be allergic to caffeine.
Also, a collapsible steel baton is located in a “Break In Emergency” box located eight inches below, and four inches to the right, of the yellow basket that holds the decaf grounds behind every counter that serves coffee. The gun three boxes over is loaded, and is intended for use against anyone who utters the word “sanka.”
This may surprise you, but there are some of us who actually enjoy the taste of coffee and do not use it simply as a vehicle for supplying caffeine. (Not so much with non-alcoholic beer for me.)
I do enjoy decaf coffee in the evening. I have never had a problem getting decaf coffee after 5:00 at Starbucks, but I will sometimes need to wait a few minutes so some fresh can be brewed. Yes, Starbucks is somewhat pretentious, but the coffee is of a consistent caliber so I am rarely surprised when I go there.
This sounds absurd. Now, it has been a while since I was near a Starbucks - they nearly went broke in Oz and closed nearly all their outlets here - but - Starbucks used to brew espresso coffee as the basis for their offerings. They initially used La Mazzoco machines, and were in large part the reason a US operation was set up by La Mazzoco. They later went to super automatic machines, but still espresso. Espresso is never ever made in advance. That is the derivation of the name. It is made “especially for you” on the spot. The coffee beans should be ground at worst only 20 minutes before being used, and the resultant coffee drunk as soon as possible. Certainly all the Starbucks I have seen in the past had supplies of their normal and decaffinated beans to hand. Not making a decaf coffee after a certain time simply makes no sense.
That all said, maybe Starbucks has deteriorated even more than when I last saw one. Maybe they do just make up jugs of coffee and pour them into cups. No longer espresso. I guess given the mediocre quality of their product, and the clear lack of discrimination of the majority of their customer base this might be seen as a good cost cutting idea.
As to those that despise decaf coffee as somehow missing the point, I would simply have to say that they have no real idea. There is a rich an growing base of decaf coffee of very high quality. If your idea of a coffee is something to get a dose of caffeine, I suggest NoDoze or Coke.
There is some jealousy about the term barsita. It has been highjacked in the US and subsequently spread about the world to mean the guy that drives an espresso machine. In origin it is much closer to the idea of a barman - and includes the aspects of customer hospitality you would expect from any professional in the hospitality industry, in addition to being a master of coffee preparation. Being a guy who presses the buttons on a superautomatic machine and pours the cream, icecream and sickly syrups into an oversized cup isn’t a barista.
Starbucks offers both espresso/espresso drinks and drip coffee, and AFAIK always has. Drip coffee is neither better nor worse than espresso–it’s just a different beverage. Personally, I prefer drip to espresso, but that’s strictly a matter of personal taste.
I have a related question. I’m not a coffee drinker, and generally don’t go in places like Starbucks because I can’t stand the smell. I’ve always assumed that they had the ability to brew coffee by the cup these days, and didn’t have to make a whole pot of any particular variety. My wife’s coffeemaker at home is hardly high-tech, but she can adjust how much ground coffee and water she adds and make a single cup of coffee. Why can’t Starbucks?
The trick in brewing coffee is to extract all the stuff that tastes and smells good, and leave behind the stuff that doesn’t. When brewing espresso this is achieved with a balance of the temperature of the water and the dynamics of the flow of water through the ground coffee. These dynamics are controlled by water pressure, size of the grains of ground coffee, the depth of the bed of grounds, and the density of the bed. The water flows once, in a single pass and in a complex mess of processes extracts the soluble and insoluble components that you want. The stuff that is extracted early from the grounds is not the same as that that is extracted later - in fact you can do very interesting experiments by tasting the changes in taste through the length of a pour.
The final balance of flavours in the cup is sum of all the flavours across the time of the pour.
If you vary the parameters, I.e. by changing the amount of coffee in the bed, it all goes to hell. Even cutting the pour short doesn’t help, since it changes the balance. The single best way of making a weaker coffee is to dilute it with hot water after it has been poured.
For other mechanisms for making coffee it isn’t so critical. Espresso is brewed with 9 bar of pressure, which is high enough that things are remarkably critical to avoid it going totally wrong. Low, or zero pressure techniques, I.e. press pot, are more amenable to variation.
When I hear people rant against Starbucks, it nearly always involves two points - that they drive out smaller shops, and that they’re overpriced. How does this make sense? Isn’t Starbucks sort of the opposite of Walmart? Walmart undercuts all the Mom and Pop stores because they can buy huge amounts of product in bulk and charge much less than independent stores. Starbucks charges, in general, MORE than the independent coffee stores for their products.
And the reason they serve the “pretentious” stuff is to increase business - people who usually don’t drink coffee but have lots of disposable income and enjoy buying stuff (like teenagers) love the orange mocha frappucinos with whip cream and chocolate drizzle. It’s quite brilliant.
I don’t live somewhere that Starbucks is easily accessible anymore, but I used to get a tall coffee every now and then. Wasn’t the world’s best coffee, wasn’t too bad. But I don’t understand the hate; if you don’t want to drink their coffee, if you don’t want to be in the same building with the word “frappucino”, if you’re unable to comprehend the sizing system, then you’re free to head to the guy with the coffee cart around the corner. You know, get a life.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten decaf right at the closing of Starbucks. On the few times they haven’t had either decaf or regular, they always say “I’ll brew some up, it’ll be about five minutes.” Then they always give me something for waiting. Yeah they were probably gonna throw out that old donut anyway, but I’ve never received anything but great service at Starbucks.
Are you sure it was a REAL Starbucks and not just a coffee place that served their coffee?