I like their music & decor.
The coffee is ok.
Their sizing really is Not Enough, Just About Right and ** Up All Night Bladder Buster**
Oh, good lord. I must admit to something of a proprietary interest in Starbucks; although I’ve been in New York for 13 years, I’m originally from Seattle, and I’m fond of telling people that I used to go to Starbucks when there were three. (My godmother, bless her heart, was a pre-school teacher for one of the founder’s children. He offered her an early investment in 1970. She turned him down - who’s going to spend so much for coffee when you can buy Folger’s in a can?)
That said, I don’t care for them that much; I prefer my own coffee at home.
Anyway, my point is that nostalgia notwithstanding, are the stores Starbucks tends to replace really any better? In the time I’ve lived in NYC I’ve seen what Starbucks killed: mostly, mediocre local chains. Does anybody really miss Dalton’s? Or New World Coffee? Or Timothy’s? Independents are actually more likely to survive, because they can change more easily to respond. It’s ironic: I live in Chelsea, where Starbucks and Blockbuster both arrived on the same block in the mid-90s. Everyone feared that Paradise Muffin across from Starbucks, and Video Blitz across from Blockbuster, would be dead in a year.
In 2002, Blockbuster closed: it’s hard to make a buck in a gay neighborhood when you don’t rent porn. Despite a second Starbucks three blocks from the first, Paradise Muffin is continuing to prosper, largely because their food is so much better than Starbucks and their coffee’s good, too.
The anti-Starbucks folks tend to be a bit overwrought, IMHO. Remember that every concept has its limits and breeds its own dissatisfactions, which is why McDonalds isn’t doing very well. People will always want to something new, and with creative destrution, they can get it.
I like Starbucks. It’s the best coffee that I’ve tried. No, I haven’t tried any fancy Italian coffeehouses. No, I can’t try any fancy Italian coffeehouses, unless I take a roadtrip to a large city.
We don’t have a Starbucks in town, but I want one. Right now the best coffee in town comes from Cafe Karuba.
I think Best in Show showed it best in the scene where the “catalog people” were describing how they first met. They were in 2 separate Starbucks across the street from each other working on their Powerbooks. Starbucks appeals to pretentious people that confuse brand-name awareness with actual taste and appreciation for quality.
I’m a former apprentice coffee roaster, and my somewhat informed position is that Starbucks coffee is burnt, not dark-roasted. I would guess that the beans are roasted at slightly too high of a temperature. If they did them at a slightly lower temperature for a longer time, they’d taste better. But then again, the burning masks the taste, which leads me to believe that they’re using beans of inconsistent quality. IIRC, they brag that they use only arabicas. (Arabica and robusta are the two main strains of coffee.) Sure, a lot of robustas are crap, but a good Colombian robusta beats an inferior arabica any day.
Plus, why the hell should you have to learn a whole new vocabulary just to get a freakin’ cup of coffee. Someone above said that if you want a “small,” you should just ask for a “short.” Why can’t I just ask for a “small?” Instead of requiring every customer to learn the asinine names for the different sizes, why can’t the people that actually work there do the translations? How hard would it be for them to respond to my request for a “large coffee” by just holding up the cup for the “grande” or “gigante” or whatever the fuck it is and saying “this size?” Then I could just say “yeah” and get on with it.
I haven’t gotten a hot coffee there in years, but it used to be that if you just wanted a regular cup of coffee, they would make you choose the variety! As it happens, I do know the difference between a Kenya and a Sumatra due to my past coffee roasting experience, but I doubt that the vast majority of people know or care. Plus, for everyday drinking, I just like a balanced blend or a good Colombian, not some special variety.
And Starbucks is way overpriced. I usually get coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, which is actually fairly expensive. My large coffee comes to $1.77 with tax. But the coffee is yummy and they don’t give me a hard time, so it’s definitely worth it. Compare that to Starbucks, where I’d have to pay 3 bucks, and have a fucking conversation with the clerk? I’ll take the Dunk, thanks.
I don’t like Starbucks because they over-roast their beans to the point that varietal differences are burned away. I’ve also found that the few times I’ve tried them (nowhere else to get a cuppa) that the over-roasted beans were also stale. Blechhhh.
Luckily, I have an excellent local place (O’Henry’s) that roasts their own beans. They throw out any beans that have been around too long and so never sell stale beans.
The coffee’s bad. It’s nowhere near the standard of any number of coffees served at any number of cafes, coffee carts, holes-in-the-wall and so forth scattered around. This is partly the fault of the people making the coffee, but mostly the fault of the coffee roasters. I’ve tried it three times to make sure that it wasn’t just a bad cup.
It’s hideously overpriced. I can get better coffee for $2.40 at any of the four coffee shops downstairs than I can for $6 at Starbucks.
It’s pretentious. I’m not the only one I know who turned on their heel and left after ordering a large and being told “you mean vertigo, don’t you?” with a smug expression.
Fortunately it may not be an issue much longer. Australia has a habit of chasing away franchises that don’t “get it”. Taco Bell and Boston Market were forced to close last year, and if the stories I’ve heard of the losses the Australian arm of Starbucks are making are true, they may not be able to afford to see out this year.
I don’t hate Starbucks. But why would I go there when I can go to a friendly, locally-owned coffee shop with comfy old couches, great vegetarian food, and pastries made by a local bakery? (Which I’m lucky enough to have in my city.)
As others have said, it’s the McDonalds of the beverage world. I prefer to support independent local businesses whenever possible.
I’m not a big coffee drinker, and I have no real problems with Starbucks. I go there sometimes, but I don’t have strong feelings either way about the quality of their coffee or the cafe experience or anything.
I’d just like to point out a couple of things:
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Just because you don’t like Starbucks doesn’t mean that Starbucks is evil or that the proliferation of Starbucks stores is a bad thing. The “homogenization of the culture” is nothing to worry about, and if you think in such terms I (and other intelligent non-hippies) will label you a nitwit.
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Starbucks coffee is not “overpriced.” If it was they wouldn’t be selling so goddamn much of it. You should say that “Starbucks charges more for its coffee than I am willing to spend for it” or “Starbucks coffee is overpriced FOR ME.” The state of being “overpriced” is not an objective thing, and the fact that there are lots of Starbucks making lots of money means that most people don’t think they charge more than the product is worth.
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If a Starbucks comes to town and causes a mom and pop shop down the street to close, then the only reason the mom and pop shop closed is that people prefer Starbucks over the mom and pop shop. It’s an immutable law of economics akin to the laws of thermodynamics. Starbucks is not a charitable operation, so they don’t stay in business when they don’t make money. Mom and pop shops are also in business to make money, so they don’t go out of business when they are making money.
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It’s not Starbucks’ problem if coffee growers are not being paid a “fair” price for their coffee, whatever that means. When you buy coffee at Starbucks, do you ask the manager if he’s sure you are paying a fair price for your coffee? You ever think you’re maybe not paying enough, so you toss Starbucks a little more than they’re asking? Of course not.
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If you’re the kind of person who blames all of the world’s ills on “the corporations, man,” then you need to get a fucking life and stop being a pathetic little shit.
“Hate” is a bit strong, but I’m certainly not a fan:
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Starbucks broke into the London market by buying existing chain Seattle Coffee Company. The quality immediately went down, and the prices went up. There’s no excuse for that.
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They’re frickin’ everywhere! See my signature.
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They make an appallingly bad cup of tea. I know it’s a coffee place, but many of the independent cafes Starbucks is driving out of business not only served coffee but also tea, and the tea came in a little teapot, with a proper cup and saucer, for under a pound. Some hot water and a crappy teabag in a paper cup for £1.50 is ludicrous; I’d have to steal the milk pitcher for that to be good value for money.
Their one saving grace is that they do soy milk, which not every coffee place does.
I only buy pre-brewed coffee at places where I know for certain that garlic bagels, toasted, with cream cheese NOT from little individually-wrapped thingies AND lox are readily available.
When Starbucks enters civilization, then it will be worth my patronage. Until then, no dice.
You’re not the first actual coffee roaster to tell me that SB burns their beans.
I can’t stomach French Roast as it is, and SB crosses that fleeting instant between roast and burnt.
Agreed about the tea. All the chain coffee places get this wrong - tea has to be brewed from water JUST OFF THE BOIL, not water at 80c that’s been sat there for two hours. And for GOD’S SAKE please WARM the pretentious oversized mugs, so they don’t turn the whole thing into dishwasher outflow.
There is a Starbucks on our downtown strip within five blocks of seven indie coffee houses… it’s a college town. There are rarely people in there.
I don’t go in there because it’s expensive and I prefer to support local businesses. (I can get a large hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles (!) across the street for $1.50.) I also rarely drink coffee. I’d rather walk across the street and get fair trade coffee with more options and better brownies… mmm, brownies… ahem.
I have two friends that work at different Starbucks (on in KC and one in Boston). I’ve considered working at a Starbucks because of the benefits and the free coffee (makes great gifts).
Yeah, I hear that alot as well. Did people never visit the mom-and-pop espresso places prior to a Starbucks being installed? The prices are about the same at every coffee shop I’ve ever been to, allowing for regional price differences and all that. Yeah, a $4.00 cup of coffee isn’t cheap, but its somewhat labor-intensive to produce (at least compared with the local diner’s coffee urn), and seems to be what the market will bear.
Also, plain old coffee at Starbucks (as opposed to drinks made from espresso shots or other such niceities) is only about a buck. Just like what you’d pay at any gas station.
Finally, re: “Starbucks coffee is bad”, I’m not buying it. I’ve had coffee at about a billion different establishments around the world, and its ranged from awful to wonderful. Starbucks is nowhere near awful, and if its burned, your barista made it wrong. Their coffee is far better than typical “breakfast coffee”. Maybe certain people don’t subjectively like the coffee at S-bucks (the most common complaint I hear is that its “too bitter”), but its not “bad coffee” by any standard. It’s made from good beans, by well-trained employees, using good water. How bad could it be?
Never heard of this rumor, done no research on it, but nope. They definitely don’t do this. Why would they? Coffee has plenty of caffeine already, more caffeine won’t “addict” people, causing them to come back (presuming this is the source of the rumor), it would open them up to lawsuits, it might be a violation of various food/labelling/health codes to do so…the list could go on and on.
So no cite, but no, they don’t do this.
You can’t blame the barista, he doesn’t roast the beans! Starbucks over-roasts their beans, and there is nothing the barista can do about it. When coffee is over-roasted, the varietal differences are ruined. I like Indonesian coffees, but if the beans are over-roasted (like at *$$) everything that makes a good Java special and different from a good Columbian is just burned away.
Now I don’t roast my own, because I have a great coffee place close by where I can buy freshly roasted beans. But if all I had to choose from was Starbucks or grocery store coffee, I’d be buying a roaster.
This just in from my local Starbucks… prices.
Drip Coffee
8oz = $1.20
12oz = $1.30
16oz = $1.50
20oz = $1.60
I don’t remember the latte prices, but they seemed to be about $1 more.
I didn’t find ANY $4-5 dollar drinks on the menu. The most expensive I remember was around $3.50 for giant blended thing.
Those prices are right in line with ALL the other places that serve espresso. If those seem out of line for drink prices, perhaps Denny’s or Ihop would be a better place for you to get coffee 
As for the cup names: I grew up in Seattle during the rise of Starbucks. I used to go with my father to buy beans in the early days.
I hardly ever went to starbucks for coffee drinks. I was always a Seattles Best Coffee kind of guy. There was also an espresso stand which employed a very sexy young woman and I favoured her espresso the most (that is until she quit).
By the mid 80’s in Seattle, small coffee shops were starting to pop up everywhere. There were two drink sizes at all of these cafes, drive-throughs and espresso stands -they were always named “tall” and “grande” (12oz & 16oz). Some cafes had the third smaller 8oz named “short”. I do not think the names of the cup sizes are a Starbucks invention, I think it was part of the whole Seattle neo-coffee generation. That said, Starbucks is the only place I’ve seen that offers a 20oz cup named “venti” (Italian for twenty).
And in Starbucks defense, you do not have to order using the cup names. If you ask for a medium, you’ll get the 16oz size. If you order a large, you’ll get the 20oz. If you ask for the small you may be asked if you mean the short or the tall (which is normally followed by an employee holding up two cups). I see it all the time.
It’s the difference between taking a 2-minute walk to the coffee stand/snack bar on campus and taking a ten-minute walk down the hill to the Starbucks adjoining the campus bookstore. Not much of a difference otherwise except that Starbucks is slightly more expensive but offers more choices (sometimes, you just want a plain cup of joe, however)
There’s no valid reason to hate Starbucks. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but that’s different from hate. People who hate it, as opposed to not caring for it, are generally clueless dopes trying to be hip by hating “the Evil Corporation.”
Starbucks, generally does NOT run indepent growers out of town. As per this Wall Street Journal article:
The attitudes of a lot of people can be summed up in a few lines in that same article, too:
In other words, most people have a perception that’s wildly out of touch with reality. They’re trained to think big corporation = bad. So they hate Starbucks.
I don’t understand the argument, “Oh, Starbucks is full of pretentious people so I don’t go there”.
Speaking as a pretentious git, working in a pretentious frou-frou industry, surrounded by pretentious air-kissing acquaintances, I can assure that NO-ONE with any pretensions towards, well pretentiousness, would be caught dead in a CHAIN such as Starbucks.
Sipping espresso at a table-service Italian cafe, which features live avante garde jazz performances, poetry readings and European editions of Vogue and Esquire for its patrons = PRETENTIOUS
Queuing up at Starbucks for a latte in a paper cup = bourgeois
… not that I have a problem with Starbucks or its patrons, however. I’m more inclined to go someplace else and have a cuppa tea, but I’m perfectly happy to grab a coffee from Starbucks, if that’s what available.
Most of the objections towards Starbucks–not in this thread, mind–seem to stem from an ill-defined and ill-informed distaste for successful corporations. Fuck that.