Absolutely. However I’m in a tiny town lacking a good local roaster.
Then again it also lacks a Starbucks.
It does have a Dunkin’ Donuts, but unlike what I recall from my collage days (1990s) the coffee is bad, and the donuts are generally stale. I haven’t been brave enough to try the local gas station coffee, but oddly they have better donuts than DD. I don’t really understand it. I know the best option for donuts is to skip the two closest towns entirely, and leave the country and go 17 miles to Tim Hortons, but that is quite a distance for donuts…
Ooooh! Good point! Sadly the bakery in town recently closed and while the lady who ran it wants to open another with a “better business model” (she wants street front access this time rather then being in the back of a restaurant), we are currently without a bakery.
That’s a good point. There are 2 Timmy’s closer to my house than the nearest Charbucks. There is a Biggby even closer, though, and that’s our usual go-to for getting coffee while out.
[I missed the moment Biggby stopped being a “local” chain somehow. They’re in 12 states now. ]
I hate Starbucks food; as others have noted, the ‘shipped in’ taste really turns me off. I buy their whole bean dark Espresso coffee by the pound, grind it at home every morning and afternoon for a couple of cups of Aeropress coffee.
Our favorite coffee shop in downtown Vancouver is Breka. Every coffee is individually brewed as an Americano, they make their own pastries and lunch items, are open 24/7 and have 3 locations within a 20 minute walk. Trees is our 2nd choice with 3 locations within walking distance.
Alas the access to the inside was blocked off by the cops and the line of cars was wrapped all the way around the parking lot of the nearby BestBuy. The local news stations seemed to be filming their news bites at the time.
If you’d told me that McD’s had partnered with Sega to promote ToeJam & Earl I would believe you.
That character is exactly what I would expect to see on planet Funkotron.
In essence, they misread the Australian market badly, not accounting for the influence of 50-odd years of Italian and Greek migration, and that we’d grown up with local cafes.
According to the 2016 IBIS World Report, large coffee chains like Starbucks, The Coffee Club, and Gloria Jeans only make up 5% of the total market in Australia.
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