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Comment by jahbrewski | Hacker News Reader

Not so sure it's due to "coffee addicts" so much as the fact that Starbucks gift cards became the perfect, generic, gift. How many times have you been on your way to X, needed to bring a gift, and just run into Walgreens?

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Starbucks coffee and espresso drinks are "will do in a pinch" for me. I'd much rather frequent a local coffee shop with better espresso than what Starbucks serves.

I think Starbucks makes more money these days from its sugary cold drinks than its hot coffee/tea/espresso.

For me too.

Starbucks is train station or airport "ehh, what did I expect?" coffee.

It's the McDonalds of coffee. Rarely surprising in either a good way or a bad way.

I think that for all of their drinks but the coldbrew. They have solid cold brew and I've tried nearly every artisan coffee shop in DTLA and the valley

Yup, even Costa Coffee has decent cold brew. In my opinion it is very hard to make a bad cold brew, compared to espresso. You just take OK coffee and let it sit for 12 hours. Bingo. With espresso - in Starbucks the make the "american espresso" that quite sucks. It is large and burned.

Also Starbucks french press is pretty decent and good value for money, but it is on "secret" menu and you need to ask for it.

Yeah, I think so too, but for some reason higher end shops try to make special coldbrew and messing it up. It's not complicated. Just takes some planning.

Anecdotally, I've spent maybe ~$5,000 at starbucks in my life. I used a gift card for ~$25 of that and I have never given one as a gift.

For me, it is the predictable atmosphere, the AC, the WiFi, the coffee itself, the hours of operation, and the location convenience that draws my money, not the gift cards. I would be surprised to learn I'm in the minority there, as I figured I was a common starbucks demographic / customer target.

Their washrooms are usually better than most.

And they’re the only chain restaurant/café whose employees don’t appear clinically depressed at every location.

I hope it’s because they’re actually happy.

That may be part of it, but Starbucks has done a very good job of getting their regular customers to sign up for their loyalty program and online/app ordering, and to have them sign up for automatically replenishing (every time my balance goes below $10, load another $25) gift card accounts to use both features.

the default setting on the starbucks app on my phone is to automatically top up every time the balance drops below $10. So starbucks basically has a permanent $10 loan from me. I'm sure i'm not the only one.

actual gift cards given as gifts though are probably more likely to be used up and discarded, instead of being set to auto-reload and carry a balance.

That made me delete the app and avoid Starbucks. I was more than willing to pay with a cc, but they wanted me to give them an interest free loan?

Did you realise it was optional?

When I used the app a couple years ago, it was to skip the in store line and it was forcing me to pay a minimum $5 or $10 for Starbucks credit, and then use that to pay for the $3 item I was planning on buying. Basically, asking me to pay $5 for $3 item since I go to Starbucks once every few years. I don’t know if it has changed.

Yikes. A permanent $10 loan towards bad coffee? I feel for you.

Have you used their rewards program? You'll usually carry some sort of a balance to do so, and many people use the program.

Definitely. A mission saver for time immediate events, when you need a gift. Use it a couple of times.

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