Starbucks Prospers by Keeping Pace with the Coffee Snobs | Hacker News Reader

Starbucks Prospers by Keeping Pace with the Coffee Snobs

nytimes.com

30 pointszbravo44 comments

I don't buy the comparison of Starbuck's to McDonalds. Starbucks sets much higher standard in coffee than McDonalds does in burgers. And prior to Starbucks nationwide roll out, McDonald's weak coffee in a styrofoam cup set the standard. Yuck

I remember the time before Starbucks. American coffee was some watered down beans with 5% non-coffee filler that had been sitting in an open air carafe on an electric heating plate for the past 3 hours. Yuck

I love my local coffee houses, but 30 years ago there were almost none. You had to live downtown in a major city or in a university town to easily find good coffee. Yes, I am sad when I visit Seattle or the Bay Area and see how many local places have gone away, but out here in rural Colorado I think Starbucks helped grow demand for good coffee and local shops.

I think a comparison could be made in the "dumbing-down" of the cooking (McDonalds)/brewing (Starbucks) process. I was surprised last week to see that the barista-side of a Starbucks machine consisted of a few buttons and that's it. The machine grinded, tamped, and pulled the espresso. Much in the same way a cook at McDonalds puts raw food into a machine, presses a button and the computer takes care of the rest.

Interesting theory to explain why Starbucks' stock price is up, but I'm not sure I believe it. Friends in Seattle tell me that to "coffee snobs" Starbucks coffee is basically on par with McDonald' burgers, and that some locations serve coffee without any Starbucks related branding or nomenclature to avoid driving away the people who feel that way.

They may be increasing the quality of the bean they source.

But their beans are stale by the time they get to the store (once you roast the bean, the clock starts).

And they notoriously over-roast their beans, giving it that distinctive burnt taste.

I'll continue going to my shop that roasts their beans daily... and doesn't think that a flat white can come in three sizes.

>... and doesn't think that a flat white can come in three sizes.

That is some impressive pretension. You could just order the size you think a flat white should be, but no, the mere option of multiple sizes makes Starbucks unacceptable to your refined tastes.

I'm not so sure. At all the coffee shops around where I live, whenever you order a macchiato, they have to quiz you to make sure you want an actual macchiato, and not the sugar-filled concoction Starbucks labels a "macchiato." I could see the same thing happening with flat whites, which have certain dimensions as part of their definition. It's annoying when a large chain redefines an established, useful term.

To be fair, Starbucks calls their thing a "caramel macchiato". I'm not sure they are fully to blame for people inexplicably deciding that "macchiato" on its own somehow means "cup of caramel sauce".

For the flat white, I understand the concern about sizing, but I can't see it making any kind of sense economically to keep specially-sized cups on hand for this, nor can I see serving it "with room" in an 8oz cup, since they'd constantly get people asking why it's not full. Realistically, pretty much no one is ordering an 8oz cup of anything in Starbucks, anyway. Everyone thinks they need 16 ounces of milk with their coffee. Hard to justify a lot of concern about serving the perfect 5.5oz size when the most common word before "flat white" is probably "grande". And that's not just at Starbucks, but at pretty much any cafe in the US.

I'm assuming he believes the "correct" size for a flat white is 165ml, and Starbucks doesn't offer that size... AFAIK.

Fair enough, but you can always ask for that size. The relevant phrase at Starbucks would be something like "extra short" or "short with a little room". They're generally pretty accommodating, not just at Starbucks, but at any decent cafe.

I generally drink an extra-short Americano (apparently sometimes called an Italiano), at about 5 oz total, and no one has this on the menu, but everyone is willing to make it for me. It's not as convenient as having it on on the menu, but it works just fine.

"they".

I am not a he.

This. I don't buy the hype that this or that trendy SF coffee roaster has significantly more skills than the next one (although Ritual Roasters and Sightglass are consistently good :-), but in my experience the principal factor driving taste in home brewed coffee is how recently the beans were roasted. With local roasters, you can usually buy something roasted within a couple of days. Anything industrial and it's in the order of weeks, which saps the aromas tremendously, even in the best storage conditions. Unless Starbucks starts roasting locally, they can't compete with that.

> And they notoriously over-roast their beans, giving it that distinctive burnt taste.

They've offered multiple kinds of roasts for years now. If you don't like their dark roast, you have lighter ones to choose from.

The OP you're replying to doesn't even go to Starbucks because they offer size choices. Your facts won't change his/her mind.

I go there when there's no other options, and probably twice a year to see if they've gotten better.

If I'm spending $4+ on an espresso drink, I'd rather it not taste bad :)

Every time I've tried to get a blonde roast in the past year and a half I've been told they don't have it. This is across the country, with an attempt every couple months or so.

All stores have blonde roast (almost) all the time. However, you have to ask for a pour over, they only tend to have it on drip early in the morning.

Since doing a pour over is kind of a pain, most people who work there will just say "we don't have any left", instead of offering the pour over.

I've never seen blonde roast decaf available.

They don't grind the other roasts for espresso.

I like dark roasts. But theirs is crap :)

Been happily roasting my own beans for almost two years. I urge anyone interested to give it a shot, there's no going back.

Any tips/hints for getting started?

I started as simple as a pan on the stove and a spoon. It's better if you can do it outside or somewhere well ventilated, burning chaff isn't the most pleasant smell.

If you can make friends with a local small batch roaster you can pick up a lot of info quickly. The ones I've met love to talk shop about roasting. And they can sell you some of their stock directly, so you can try more things without waiting for it to get shipped to you.

1. Order Sweetmaria's sampler. I suggest sampler cause its cheaper after factoring shipping.

2. Order Presto Air Popper. (http://www.amazon.com/Presto-04820-PopLite-Hot-Popper/dp/B00...)

3. Experiment! Sweetmaria's is an awesome resource.

How to Make the Best Pourover Coffee

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144377

How to Make Perfect Coffee

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261639

Sweet Maria's has a great getting started write up, as well as selling green beans and coffee roasting equipment: https://www.sweetmarias.com/

To each his own. I did it, because I like to experiment with food preparation methods.

It tasted great, but was too time consuming. I got the equivalent experience by going to my local Dunn Brothers and buying whatever looked good that was roasted that day.

I used to think I'd get tired of the process of roasting once the novelty wore off, but to my surprise, here I am, still going strong.

I find the roasting process very soothing, almost like meditation.

I've been for 15 years. Never understood why new roasters feel the need to prosthelytize, however. But they always do.

> Starbucks prides itself on its care for “partners,” the noun it prefers to employees. It pays higher wages, offers health insurance even to part-time workers and pays college tuition for thousands of eligible employees. Starbucks employee turnover is relatively low, yielding benefits in efficiency and morale.

On a related note, Starbucks also has very LGBT-friendly policies at every level; they're well ahead of the curve in terms of non-discrimination policies and trans-inclusive health benefits. It's widely known within the LGBT community, and especially the trans community, that if you're LGBT and looking for a retail job, Starbucks is the number one place to look.

They do an amazing job at treating their employees well.

With the added bonus that you sometimes get the most delightfully colorful people serving your coffee. Really improves the experience for me.

FYI, Autoplaying video

Why do companies do this? I would love to see a breakdown of the bandwidth costs they pay for something that enrages most visitors and is tolerated by most of the remaining. I have never visited a website and said "man, I wish that video had just played itself"

Boutique coffee is all about nuance- it's like Scotch, or bourbon, or tobacco. You get this particular sack of beans from this tiny coffee producer in the middle of nowhere and you've roasted 5lbs of it just so and you then grind it just so and you then prepare it just so with an exacting process and carefully controlling your variables of time of extraction and water temp.

Starbucks cannot and does possess the ability to harness that subtlety because they operate on a huge scale. They roast their beans to burnt in order to drive out the differences between beans sourced at different plantations because they have to offer a homogenized product across all of their stores and all of their retail offerings. Every cup of coffee at every Starbucks across the entire world has to taste exactly the same because that's what customers expect[0].

If I want nuance I go to a local coffee roaster and ask the owner what's good that day. If I just want a caffeine fix I can go to Starbucks or, better yet, just drink the crappy stuff at work that's free and load up on the sugar and cream.

I don't go to a college rager and expect to find Springbank (fancy single-source Scotch); I go and expect to find Natty Light and Yuengling and, in fact, I expect those offerings because I'm not going to stand around and compare tasting notes, I'm going to get drunk and have a good time. Similarly, I go to Starbucks as a mid-morning break at work so I can have an excuse to get up and walk around and get something caffeinated I can sip at my desk while doing other things; I'm not expecting the coffee experience nor do I want it, I just want to get my buzz on and go about my day.

Additionally I think this move by Starbucks is putting even more pressure on small boutique coffee shops and potentially marginalizing them even further because now casual consumers can just go to Starbucks and get what they think is a "boutique experience" when, in fact, their money and their time would be better spent going to the actual boutique coffee shop (Edit- amyjess pointed out that this is NOT the case! http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...). Not to mention a potential ripple effect in coffee pricing where Starbucks could be able to strong-arm the market and drive small specialty coffee growers out of business like Wal-Mart and the enormous pickle jar[1].

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/119vnt/question_reg... [1]http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

> Additionally I think this move by Starbucks is putting even more pressure on small boutique coffee shops and potentially marginalizing them even further because now casual consumers can just go to Starbucks and get what they think is a "boutique experience" when, in fact, their money and their time would be better spent going to the actual boutique coffee shop.

The rest of your comment was excellent, except for this part. Starbucks actually has the exact opposite effect on small coffee shops: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...

Turns out that the presence of a Starbucks ends up evangelizing the public on coffee, converting non-coffee drinkers into coffee drinkers and making people more likely to seek coffee from all sources. And they will: as soon as the local Starbucks gets too crowded for comfort, people will move to another coffee shop so they don't have to wait on line.

This is awesome and I had not seen this article! Thanks!

| Boutique coffee is all about nuance- it's like Scotch, or bourbon, or tobacco.

For the record, bourbon (and I assume Scotch, but Im much less familiar with it) is about as industrial as you get. The labels might have pictures of old men and occasional far fetched stories, but 99% of the bourbon on shelves is made in giant industrial plants.

In a lot of ways its a lot like Starbucks. They have beans from various places, sell a story about shade grown artisanally produced, etc. At the end of the day, both bourbon producers and Starbucks probably strike an economic sweet spot with regards to nuance and scale.

For their normal coffee I totally agree, but have you tried one of their Reserve coffees on the Clover machine mentioned in the article? As far as I know it tunes its brewing parameters to each individual type of bean and it's consistently the best coffee I've had besides what I can make on my own.

I haven't, actually, because I assumed it was just a gimmick. And honestly, it IS a gimmick, allowing Starbucks to offer fancy "boutique" coffee at multiple locations at the press of a button instead of emphasizing barista training and artistry.

I am completely happy to be a Luddite for this particular subject because to me part of what I want from boutique coffee is the expierence. I want some bearded hipster dude who has spent the last decade of his life perfecting his craft to work in conjunction with a tattooed college drop-out who has two decades of roasting experience to craft me a cup of coffee that has never been and will never be seen again on this earth because of infinite subtle variations in the exact beans that were used in making it. I consider making amazing coffee to be an art form, same as making amazing French Pâtisserie or Jamón Ibérico[1] or Colonnata lardo[2]. Starbucks offering boutique coffee to me is like Target saying they now are carrying Ibérico ham- it might be made out of pig and it might be cured in the same fashion but it is not, cannot, and will not ever be Jamón Ibérico and calling it such not only cheapens the entire concept of artistry in making Jamón Ibérico but also misleads the thousands of consumers who might buy it, decide it's not that good, and then completely write off Jamón Ibérico for the rest of their lives, thus missing out on something incredible that many generations have toiled away at perfecting.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam%C3%B3n_ib%C3%A9rico [2]http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/italian-table-talk-lardo-di-...

Agreed. I really love coffee and the Starbucks Ethiopian Yirgacheffe made on the clover is one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had.

It consistently out-performs all the other extremely high end coffee houses I have been to. There is an Intelligentsia in my neighborhood where several of the baristas have coffee beans tattooed on their arms and hands as a symbol of their dedication to the craft, yet they cannot produce a better cup of coffee made by this machine at than the "McDonalds" of coffee houses. Pretty surprising.

Or it could just be a kind of placebo effect that doesn't stand up to double blind testing, and the function of coffee pickiness has more to do with social signaling than flavor.

There are subtle strokes that are off the chart of what I'd say "an average consumer" might find or look for that are _easily_ identifiable with a small amount of training and effort (I've identified roast or lot changes from my go-to roaster without any prompting or hints from them). I think Starbucks (outside of their Starbucks Reserve store in Seattle) really isn't looking to serve that market -- they're really most middle-of-the-road. In fact, Starbucks is probably getting by on a lot of signalling in that less subtle space.

No, go try and espresso from Starbucks and then go try one from a good shop. One tastes burnt the other tastes great.

Same can be said about wine, micro brews, etc and is applicable only to your avg consumer. Those really invested in great coffee can dial things down to the region the bean was grown in.

This is an investor relations puff piece if I've ever seen one.

Waiting for the day Starbucks carries Kopi Luwak[1]. /sarcasm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

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