Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/31/starbucks-sales-fall-as-americans-sour-on-expensive-coffee.html
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Are they soured on expensive coffee or sick of Starbucks being a greedy corporate asshole?
Treat your customer-facing workers like shit and your customers will be less satisfied; it’s that simple.
Meanwhile, competitors like Dutch Bros are growing rapidly slinging expensive coffee drinks.
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I’ve been anti-Starbucks since they destroyed the Coffee Connection here in Boston, and that was thirty years ago. In all that time, I’ve never read a story about them that made me change my mind. They just suck in all the ways.
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I’m okay paying well for my coffee, but I prefer to get it from a smaller, local shop… doubly so if the roast their own or get their beans from a local roaster… Atmosphere is better, coffee is better, and I feel like more of my spending money into the local community. I have at least 2 coffee shops I go to in town… though I checked out one out in my suburban community that opened recently, and there is one other that I’ve been meaning to try…
Plus, Starbucks coffee is always too burnt tasting for me… as @beschizza said, sour…
Maybe more people are turning to local alternatives?
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You’re not alone: they didn’t earn the nickname Charbucks for nothing.
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When I look at their menu, it looks like they mostly sell coffee-flavored sugar solutions. Which explains the margins.
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I was a Starbucks regular for about a decade. I drove to work, walked to the Starbucks, bantered with the baristas who all knew me and vice-versa, walked back to the office. My picture was up on their wall in multiple Halloween or May the 4th costumes.
My drink was a medium-expensive espresso drink. I like their espresso drinks and their baristas around here were really good.
When Starbucks went all in on union busting, I stopped cold. I requested a refund on the remnant of my account and closed my rewards membership.
They lost a lot of money when I left.
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Empires, even coffee empires like Starbucks, rise and fall.
Frankly I can’t wait for Starbucks to loosen its death grip on the industry and let more locals and independents serve us coffee. The massively slicked-over vibe in most Starbucks just gives me the willies. I can’t tell if it’s the murdered burnt bean smell (I admit I am not much of an espresso drinker, maybe that’s part of it) or the curated sterile corporate-ness of it or what, but neighborhood coffee shops are about 10% of the glue that holds my universe together.
I have friends who are very much Starbucks regulars. I sometimes meet them there. I can’t shake the vibe. It ain’t right.
I know this has been posted in other threads, but I believe it bears repeating:
… muzzled, subjugated, underpaid staff at coffeehouses benefit no one but the profiteers at the top of the pyramid, and I’m eliminating pharoahs in my life wherever possible.
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I don’t even drink coffee, and I miss Coffee Connection.
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No kidding. Some of their “Venti” drinks clock in at over 500 calories. Even a few of the 12oz “Tall” drinks are 350 calories, which is more than twice as much sugar as a 12oz can of coke. How do they manage to squeeze that much sugar into a drink that size? Quite the achievement in food science.
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This. My loyalty at the time to *$$ was at least partly because I was doing so much work travel and there weren’t consistent options elsewhere. When you’re used to PNW coffee, most other coffee was watered-down yuckwater. Plus, it was often impossible to find a coffee shop that even knew what espresso was. Now it’s ubiquitous. There’s no problem to find local coffee houses that brew a mean latte or cortado.
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That’s the thing about competition when there is a dominant player in that section of the market: if you survive at all, it’s because you are blatantly better.
Fourbucks (out of date name I used to call it 20 years ago) is shite. Over roasted to make it seem richer. Probably okay if you are taking a shedload of sugary crap to cover up the taste of the coffee. Literally every local coffee shop is way ahead of it. And so is my own in the morning in my kitchen. Even if I’m not forking out for good coffee.
Basically I think that both of those reasons above are why they are running down: everywhere else is better; you can make it at home. The fact that they are arseholes probably doesn’t count for too much as most corporate brands that are successful are run by the biggest, smelliest, most festering arseholes that there are.
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I try not to use Starbucks as they appear to take a homeopathic approach to coffee. The only time I will drink there is if the alternative is that strange black lukewarm bitter liquid American hotels call ‘coffee’.
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They seem to have accomplish that with their teas too, and I can’t fathom how they are capable of doing that.
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My late mom said starbucks tastes burnt and bitter.
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I will own my neurodivergence, and the obvious effects caffeine have on my concentration and my physical activity. My own experiences with c-c-c-coffee show me that I can be productive when I lack motivation, if I but drink this nice cold brewed medium roast here on the kitchen counter.
Coffee, a tool of The Man? Or just a way to git 'er dun when facing a slog, a thankless march? Does such a distinction even matter?
Medicinal indeed.
ETA: grammar
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For additional context, things will get worse because coffee prices are set to go up further
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It’s hard for me to say anything positive about Charbucks other than their coffee is better than
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