I used to visit Starbucks regularly. But it was expensive. Figured out a cold brew method that works for us and went for some higher quality beans and our own grinder. Coffee is much better, a whole lot cheaper even when I buy the $18 a pound beans, and I don’t add any sugar at home.
I still have a weakness for sugary frozen things with espresso in them a few times a month but have been going to Black Rock or Summer Moon instead. Not local but not gigantic corpo with a side of union busting.
I’ll do Starbucks when lacking options. Airport, Disney world, stop on a car trip. For places to hang out and drink a cuppa, not just driving thru, our local place is nice. Not as good as my besties’ local cafe, but good.
You’ll get no argument from me when it comes to their coffee. I disagree when it comes to their espresso. To me, it’s better than the newer brands like Dutch Bros and BlackRock, on par with Peete’s, and way behind Stumptown. Other than very local shops, those are pretty much my options around here for espresso.
I’ve heard that the Summer Moon owners are… not great. Trump supporters, anti-choice, anti-vax, and they had a fake persona when they started the business of being nice and caring but once the business took off their real self came out. Business had been booming but they decided to cut wages, increased prices.
Edit: Looking at some reddit posts the owners are very much the Christian conservative type that hide it as to not scare away left leaning customers. And they supposedly compared abortion to the holocaust in an email to a christian non-profit. And must i add this is hearsay, but it gels to the things i have heard locally from other Austinites.
Well then. That’s disappointing but I appreciate you telling me. No more Summer Moon for me. It’s hard to find good coffee-sweet-things in the burbs. Though downtown has some yum coffee
I have to give credit to Starbucks for changing the coffee scene, first in Vancouver, then throughout BC. I don’t go there anymore, but there was a time it was the only place to get coffee with flavour beyond Commercial Drive.
I don’t frequent Starbucks as a customer, but there’s one inside the grocery store that I shop at, so I’m continually exposed to ads for their seasonal specials and pass by their little shop-within-a-shop often. The snacks look like plastic play food and the drinks all appear to be brightly-colored sugar sludges piled high with whipped cream. Coffee barely seems to be involved. I’m nowhere close to a coffee snob, and it’s not as though I never get a craving for something sweet, but I’m baffled as to how anyone can find that stuff edible.
It’s as though they took a normal coffee shop and made a deliberate effort to make everything as heavily processed and packed with sugar as physically possible. I understand the corporate desire to cram sugar into stuff in the hopes it will addict people to your product, but surely there’s a point of diminishing returns? Does the average person really want to drink liquid cotton candy on a daily basis?
I think that both Starbucks and McDonald’s will discover the hysteresis of the market: once you start losing customers due to the high prices you will not get them back by returning to the old prices, you will need a further effort to overcome the barrier of change.
But nowadays C-executives are rewarded only on short term gains, no matter the damage to the long term survivability of the company (see Boing for the most egregious example)
Back in the 90s, when they only had relatively few stores, their coffee was pretty good. Especially to those of us who had never tried real coffee (vs the terrible swill at work). Now, with seemingly millions of stores, there’s no joy there anymore. It’s still. better than Tim Horton’s, though, my other choice in the soulless suburb of Toronto that I live in.
Since the pandemic, though, I mostly brew at home with better coffee.
I’m sure they’ll make up for their financial shortfall by screwing front line workers with pay cuts and/or staff reduction. Gotta keep those shareholders happy.
I have been going to Starbucks quite a bit the last few months, just because it’s the only place near me where I can sit and study in peace, uninterrupted, while also drinking a cup of coffee. My local library doesn’t allow food or drinks, not even water. The coffee, though, is awful. I have always thought their coffee was awful. It’s like the only coffee drinkers they talked to when developing their blends were people who like super, super bitter coffee brewed in an office coffee machine that hasn’t been cleaned in 5 years and into a carafe that hasn’t ever seen an ounce of soap. So of course their specialty is coffee drinks which involve dumping tons of cream and sugar into them. The coffee is awful otherwise. I can stomach the blonde roasts. Barely. I also occasionally order a pour-over decaf, because they don’t make decaf at my local Starbucks regularly, and that’s actually not awful. It’s not good, but it’s not awful. But holy shit, if they have a newer barista, they give you a funny look when you order a decaf.
Yeah, the woman I’m a caregiver for saw an ad for Starbucks’ Pink Drink, and asked me to get her one, since she knew I was going there to study. I told her, “I’ll check it out, but it probably has caffeine in it, and a lot of sugar.” She can’t have caffeine and she’s diabetic. The Pink Drink did, in fact, have both caffeine (not a ton though) and a boat load of sugar. When I told her, she was no longer interested, but also a little disappointed. Advertising works. They make this stuff look sooooo good to people, but most people don’t bother to check out what’s actually in it.
Some months ago: I saw a blue-painted narrow- (obviously drive-thru only) type building being constructed near me. As I was driving at the time, I could only catch the word “Dutch” on the “coming soon” sign.
I wondered to myself: “Why on earth would someone need a drive-thru paint store?”
That’s all true, no embellishments. I figured it out later, once the store had opened.
ETA: In keeping with the topic: Starbucks’ English Breakfast tea in on point and is perfect when you want a cuppa and you’re away from your usual.
