I first heard of iced coffee from the Twilight Zone episode “Nick Of Time”. Shatner and his new bride go into a small diner and order a couple of BLTs and iced coffees. So it does have some history even if it’s taken a while for it to catch on.
And I find Starbucks to be decent but I prefer to go local when I can. From my office it’s either a hop, skip, and a jump to Starbucks or the same distance in the opposite direction to a local coffee shop featured on an international poster.
The local place has a punch card–buy 9 coffees and get the 10th free. And while the local place’s coffee is about the same price as Starbucks I can never resist tipping because of this:
i want to sue starbucks for calling those high calorie coffee flavored beverages, candy in a cup, coffee. the first and last starbucks (black) coffee i had had to be freshly brewed because apparently no one drinks straight coffee there and someone else picked up my coffee. i had sat there for like 20 minutes before asking them what had happened. oh, i did have a double espresso once because i needed free wifi and i could not find “coffee” on their menu.
I think it has a much longer history in different parts of the country – in New York, New Jersey, and New England, it’s been around for a long time. (and for fun, I just checked, and the author of that TZ episode was from New Jersey!)
I first heard of it when I was a 16 year old Kmart employee. My boss came out of the Kmart Cafeteria with a cup of milky brown stuff and explained that it was iced coffee. I had no idea such a thing existed but was grossed out at the very concept. Now here I am with a jug of cold brew in my fridge and sipping it happily.
Where Starbucks is concerned, they sell quite a lot of drip coffee and feature it (and iced coffee) prominently on the menu; I believe it’s still their top selling item.
I enjoy sweets on occasion but Starbucks specializes is selling people sugar and milk laden drinks that happen to have some coffee in it. So my impression is that their priority is getting people hooked on sugar.
But to your point i have noticed that people like to show off the fact that they’re drinking Starbucks.
You reminded me of seeing syrup for making coffee milk in a Vermont Country Store catalogue years ago. It looks like they no longer carry it but coffee milk is the official drink of Rhode Island.
I’m just as happy to make my own sugar-free version at home.
I’m in the Boston area but still see coffee milk here and there, and of course Autocrat coffee syrup is easily found in any market. Friends of mine who grew up in Rhode Island tell me that all through elementary school, they were given the choice of “plain” or “coffee” in their little milk cartons at lunch. They tell me that recess was highly caffeinated for Rhode Island kids.
I had a gift card, so I went to Starbucks and ordered a cappuccino. The person behind the counter asked what kind of syrup. I said no syrup, and they looked at me like I asked for a glass of pureed feces. If I had been paying with my own dollars, I’d have just left. At least the barista managed to make something that was drinkable.
WTF??? Espresso, steamed milk, foam, what the hell does anyone want syrup for? Also wouldn’t you like you know ASK FOR SYRUP if you wanted it? Heathens. Maybe because it’s I live in Seattle but I have never got any dumbness like that at Starbucks for the few times I go and 90% of those times it is the grocery store kiosk and I just get a small (yes even though it isn’t on the menu they have a small) drip.
Counting the QFC, Safeway and Target I can walk to like 5 different Starbucks locations and yet I go a little independent place where I can get an actual nonrobotmachine pulled cappuccino or if I am feeling like a sweet drink a very nice mocha where I know I will still taste the coffee.
I used to live close to a Starbucks with a Clover. Second-best cup of coffee I’d ever had in my life. (First was an at-home Aeropressed cup made with Mexican beans that had been medium-roasted about 12 hours prior and burr-ground right before brewing. I still fear that I’ll never have a cup of coffee as good as that one.)
Unfortunately, I live in a part of the country where people think “cappuccino” is the caffeinated hot chocolate from the machine at gas station. Heathens.
At home, we grind the beans for a french press, and that’s enough coffee until the part of the day when I need to switch to club soda anyway. If I want to go out for good coffee, there is a nice independent place in the nearest big town, but that doesn’t happen very often.
I don’t like Starbucks espresso straight, but I often get a double shot over ice from them, and it isn’t bad. The burnt flavor seems to work well brewed this way.
[quote=“ChickieD, post:15, topic:80197”]
I did a lot of research into coffee, and buying it at a coffee shop is not a bad deal because most home equipment cannot bring the water to the proper temp.[/quote]
A kettle and a filter cone isn’t too expensive, and vacuum pots are also relatively affordable (though a pain to keep clean). We had a Technivorm coffee maker (I assume one of the ones you’re referring to) in my department in Norway, and coupled with $40/pound beans it made fabulous brew, but not better than one could make with manual equipment and the same beans.
New logo! Same dissociative approach to humor though. Who do you suppose supposes? I know that Moses supposes his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously.
I remember when touring in Australia years ago, being introduced to something (I believe Nestle made it) that combined coffee and sweetened condensed milk, in a tube that looked like toothpaste. Squeeze out a blob into your cup, add hot water, and you would get something coffee-like enough to stave off java jitters until you could get the real thing. Very good for camping, in those less enlightened times.
I rarely get asked if I want something extra in my nonfat iced venti latté and when I do, I tell them that the milk is the sweetener. I don’t hesitate when ordering, thus giving them the impression that I know things.
Well, don’t be too hard on the employees. I suspect the reason why Starbucks got popular is all those flavorings. (Yuck.) These customers don’t want coffee, they want the opposite of coffee; thus, all the flavor masking. I can only imagine the indignation they face the few times they forget to ask.
I used to work for a small chain of Orange County coffee houses in the mid-nineties. We used to refer to Starbucks as Charbucks, and we did have bumper stickers for awhile that read Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.
