Well yeah, if you want a lighter roast and a lot of caffeine, you want to go for a commercial roast like Yuban, Folgers, Maxwell House, etc. Problem is, that stuff is shit.
I love the hell out of Starbucks coffees, both the regular black and the “milk” drinks (a Frappuccino or cafe mocha can elevate my mood no matter how crappy I feel). I love dark roasts, though, and I don’t drink coffee to get any caffeine rush. Peets makes great coffee too, but we don’t have any of their stores here in Nevada, so I sometimes buy a few pounds online and go to Starbucks to buy coffee to drink in the car or at work.
I think most of the anti-Starbucks sentiment comes from the fact that they’re a huge corporation. A columnist from one of the local free alternative papers wrote a diatribe against Starbucks and the “posers” who drink there because his favorite independent cafe closed down. Well, shit, their coffee sucked! I like the fact that every Starbucks I’ve been to, whether in Tampa, Houston, Los Angeles or Las Vegas, serves coffee and coffee drinks that taste pretty much the same in each location, regardless of who’s behind the counter brewing it.
Their coffee is fine. For the mark-up, though, it should be friggin’ amazing and it isn’t. As for their shops, well, I don’t like having to learn their special little language to order a medium-sized cup of coffee; it’s like going to BP for gasoline and they won’t sell it to you unless you hop around on one foot.
As for the atmosphere of the shops, well, it’s just that every competitor they have does a better job of making customers feel welcome or part of a community. Starbucks has so much attitude, I feel like a black teenager at Eddie Bauer’s. They just make it clear that they wish I weren’t there.
That’s what’s wrong with Starbuck’s.
I never order “normal” coffee in cafes (why do that when I can make it myself?), but I love Starbucks’ iced drinks, especially the Frappuccinos with the brownie pieces in them. That’s some good shit. I like it a lot better than the coffee at most independent places, which pains me since I really would prefer to support an indie place instead of a huge chain, but there’s a reason most of the hole in the wall places in Pittsburgh aren’t doing better–their coffee sucks (IMO, of course). The only coffee that’s better than Starbucks is Denny’s coffee, which is weird since I don’t think they use a special blend or anything.
Also Starbucks is a fairly ethical employer, that offers a good health plan (including mental health coverage, which many health plans do not cover) to part-time employees and sells fair trade coffee. I buy their fair trade coffee in stores when I can afford it, and I think it tastes fine. Then again, I load up my coffee with tons of sugar anyway so I’m not sure if I can accurately judge the taste.
As others have said, you don’t need to learn their language to order coffee. You can ask for a “medium” and they’ll give you a medium - or what they’ve named a grande. When they first opened they were kind of snotty about the size names, but not anymore.
Well, yes it does make it intrinsically bad, just like a well done filet is intrinsically bad. The food was overcooked. This is also a pretty bold statement when you go on to slam donut shop coffee and american roast coffee just because it’s not coffee you prefer. I happen to like the coffee at my local deli and bagel shop it’s warm and comforting and pleasant to drink, not ashen like the other guys.
Someone else wants to spend their hard earned money on burnt meat, burnt toast and burnt coffee, that’s their choice, but I will still be surprised it’s popular.
I drink my coffee black.
IMO, I think Starbucks falls sort of in the middle of coffee shops in terms of quality. I’ve been in plenty of small, privately owned shops with crappy coffee. I wouldn’t kick Starbuck out of bed for eating crackers.
I highly doubt that all these small coffee shops are finding producers and beans of a quality that Starbucks just can’t approach.
Compared to convenience stores, McDonalds, or Dunkin Donuts, it’s WAY better.
Not every coffee you get in a Starbucks is dark roasted, either.
And, don’t they regularly grind their beans there right before brewing? I haven’t been in one in a while, but I seem to recall them grinding the beans right there.
My mom dragged me into the first Starbucks. It smelled like my office does when somebody leaves a nearly empty pot on the burner all weekend. I had to leave before I hurled.
Give me a nice, mellow, highly caffeinated, institutional brew like Stewarts or, especially, Cory any day. And keep 'em coming, hon!
Would it be so hard for Starbucks to sell lightly roasted coffee too? When you buy beans, you can always choose the roast type.
And that’s exactly how it tastes, too–like Maxwell House that’s been sitting there cooking for several hours. At least the coffee in the frou-frou drinks I’ve had did. When you have flavored syrup, sugar, an assload of milk, and whipped cream in a little cup of coffee, and it’s not only not sweet, but still bitter, there’s a problem.
My guess is that it’s because people rarely go into Starbucks to order “coffee.” Usually it’s more like a half-caff low-fat mocha latte type thing. I’m a Frappiccino gal myself.
Come on.
You can convince me that you don’t like Starbucks as much as some other coffee, but “smells like my office does when somebody leaves a nearly empty pot on the burner all weekend”.
Or that you were going to hurl.
Give me a break.
No-siree, not taking it back. Maybe it was because the very walls had absorbed three decades of bad coffee but the joint smelt awful, like burnt, stale coffee, precisely like someone had left a pot on the burner all weekend and the stench made me feel like I was going to vomit if I stayed there any longer. You can go there yourself and smell it. It’s by the Pike Place Market in Seattle.
You spelled “hate” wrong, there. Homogenisation sucks. If I’m in a foreign city, I don’t want the same flavour sensations that I could get on my own doorstep (or in my front room, once Starbucks’ expansion programme is complete :rolleyes: )
I drink my coffee black with a moderate amount of sweetener, usually honey. I experienced plenty of snotty attitude and over-priced, burnt coffee from local coffee shops before Starbucks. In fact, Starbuck’s doesn’t burn the christ out of their beans to the extent that some of the locally owned shops downtown do.
The fair-trade coffee is a pretty cool thing. I saw a propgram on PBS once that talked about the Starbuck’s buyers going to farmers in central america and holding seminars on how to select and sort the coffee beans into different grades so they could sell them for much more money. It did look like propaganda, but I usually trust PBS not to propagandize.
And the staff at the Starbuck’s I go to is friendly. This middle-aged suburban guy really likes a couple of college-aged cuties knowing what he drinks and getting it ready for him as soon as he walks in the door.
Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, then. I don’t think coffee and steak are a valid comparison. Meat is cooked; Coffee is roasted. It’s not the same thing. There are people who think medium rare is too done, and there are people who think rare is disgusting - doesn’t make one right and the other wrong. There are people who hate all dark-roasted coffee; doesn’t make them “right”.
But commercial roasts are inferior; they’re made with cheaper-grade beans. It’s bitter and can’t be roasted dark, because the taste would be intolerable by anyone’s standards. It’s o.k. in a pinch, or if you’re on a budget. I sometimes buy Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee, because it’s $3.99 a pound and it’s tolerable if you don’t brew it too strong. But it’s not better coffee than Starbucks.
Heh. My wife asks for a macchiato and gets pissed when they hand over a huge cup with gobs of caramel all over it.
She gets even more distraught when she’s at a (relatively) fancy-schmancy restaurant, asks for a macchiato and is told that it can’t be done because they don’t have any caramel sauce.
Say what you will about Starbucks, but they are almost singlehandedly responsible for a quantum leap in coffee quality in the United States. Until Starbucks came along, 90% of the coffee available in the U.S. was horrid. Restaurants, even nice ones, would serve Maxwell House or Folgers (and brag about it on their menus!). The average cup of coffee from a 7-11 today is better than what you used to get at a sit-down restaurant up until 1985 or so.
Whenever I hear someone say “Starbucks sucks”, I assume they are under 35 or so. They just don’t know what bad coffee is.
They were a bit more than “kind of snotty.” Here’s what happened the first (and last) time I went to a Starbucks.
Me: Hi. Can I have a small coffee, please?
Other guy: One tall coffee.
Me: (Thinking “tall” must equal “big”) Uh, no, a small please.
Other guy: (smirk) Yeah, a tall coffee.
Me: Um, that’s that size, right? (pointing to the smallest cup).
Other guy: (exasperated sigh) When you’re in a Starbucks, that’s a tall, that one’s a grande, that one’s a ventricle, and that one’s a walla-walla-bing-bang. Try reading the menu. And here’s your Tall coffee.
Me: (Something about where he could stick that tall coffee)
That was in Boston in 1999. Haven’t been into one since, so I can’t really comment on their coffee.
Actually, I’ve found that the farther away I am from Pike Place, the lower in quality it will be. Luckily, I live really, really close.
(Of course, this is a very, very small sample, and perhaps I’ve gotten really crappy baristas when I’ve been away from home.)
Still, I like the coffee.