Having listened to all the hard and skepticism can I politely make a suggestion - try the product. Starbucks Italian Via is stunningly good for an instant coffee. Does it compare to a good real coffee? No, but it beats cheap real coffee and blows away any other instant I’ve tried.
I’m normally not a Starbucks fan by any means and live in Asia where 3 in 1 is very common. I stopped carrying my own ground coffee after discovering Via because it scores well on the hassle vs taste level.
How do you make money?
I tried it back in 2009 when it was new and they were giving away free samples in store. For me it wasn’t all that convenient since you still have to add your own sugar and cream from somewhere, and once I learned how much they wanted people to actually pay it was a pretty easy to forego it.
Starbucks coffee really tastes a lot better than the 3 in 1 alternatives here in Indonesia. You get what you pay for I suppose. In Indonesia there is a lot of local coffee which is great. (Aceh, Sulawesi, Java, Bali, Papua to name a few!)…
Excelso (a local coffee chain) make a really nice ‘Java Arabica’ which is aromatic and sweet. You can pick up as beans or ground for around 40,000Rp ($USD3) for 200g at a lot of Indonesian supermarkets. Not sure if it is available overseas.
I don’t get the hate - it’s not ‘the best’ but it’s pretty consistent - Starbucks coffee that is. Unlike other places when I’m driving somewhere or in a huge rush when I go through the drive through and have them fill my mug with some Pikes (that is just coffee) it isn’t really horrible.
I will say I don’t know where you work that your coffee is great - but for me I wouldn’t touch the stuff brewed at work with a 10 foot pole - I forget this sometimes and as soon as I get a taste I remember and have to find a chaser to get the horror off my tongue.
That is rancid coffee - Starbucks is like a couple bucks for a drinkable mug that has been consistent and not overly hot (say like McDonalds - where the coffee tastes like crap as soon as it cools off). It’s certainly not the worst thing to happen to coffee in this country.
I used to buy Via coffee in China, and had ground coffee at home and work. The usual options of Nescafe and Maxwell House were terrible and worse than terrible, IMO. There seem to be two ways of drying instant coffee that affect the taste - I’m not a fan of most spray dried coffees like Nescafe, but I thought Douwe Egbert’s freeze dried variety was good.
Could be. Definitely gives them flexibility:
“…wherein the ground coffee component comprises from about 0.1% to about 30% of the soluble coffee product.”
Good point on the sugar and cream, but personally Via is a the only instant I can stand to drink without sugar and milk to hide the taste (except Via Columbia and Veranda which aren’t that nice and taste too much like their regular)
I am honestly surprised at the percentage of posters here who drink their coffee with cream and sugar. No judgement, it’s just that all the coffee drinkers in my life drink it black, so I thought it was a rare thing to add those other ingredients.
This helps me understand why Starbucks’ Frappuccinos are so popular.
Their actual coffee tastes burnt and vile to me, but they do make some brilliant milkshakes.
Starbucks pretty much crashed and burned over here though. The few remaining are usually full of backpackers using the free WiFi.
I almost always drink black coffee.
Okay, I do like the odd macchiato (not the thing that Starbucks calls that).
Hence I don’t much like the charbucks over-roasted taste.
Not a fan of the coffee milkshakes - if I’m going to consume masses of calories in the form of a drink it’ll be in beer.
Well if you mean those frappucino things, yeah, those I can’t deal with, doubly so due to as I first had one while recovering from having wisdom teeth pulled. No hot drinks, no solid food, etc for a few days. Was like a coffee flavored nutrition shake. Major bummer but it was what was available for cold coffee at the time so I guess it beat the withdrawal migraine
But a milk shake proper, Ice Cream, milk, and a double shot of espresso, thats damn tasty.
Traveling in Greece, I fell in love with the Nescafe frappé. Its kinda like a cold-brew milkshake shaken with the eponymous instant mix.
Never found it to taste the same stateside, unfortunately -maybe the coffee blend is different, or maybe it was just the Greek ambiance 
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