I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.
I don't really like Starbucks, but I feel a need to defend them that they have earned their success in ways other than marketing.
That was the case where I live for the longest time. Starbucks wasn't great, but it was a pretty big step above McDonalds and the others, and the local shops, while great, were way more expensive than Starbucks.
But now that's no longer the case, really. Plenty of local, really good coffee shops here that are now the similar pricing to Starbucks now that Starbucks has been consistently jacking up prices. Starbucks has no right to be asking $15+ for a triple shot 20oz drink when I can get a much better tasting one for the same price at the local shop across the street.
Where Starbucks still won was availability and consistency. They are literally everywhere, open later, and the recipes are so formulaic now that I know exactly what I'm getting no matter which shop I go to.
They do need to go back down in price though and settle back into that happy middle place.
This isn’t something any coffee shop should be serving. It’s like a big gulp 64 ounce soda, it shouldn’t exist.
EDIT Also, I'm pretty sure the better coffee at mcdonalds happened after starbucks, IIRC they put a lot of effort into improving their offering after starbucks exploded
Coffee of, for, and by hipsters. ;O) More power to people who want to take 3 hours to make a cup of coffee like it's a Japanese tea ceremony.
They served as a pub, in the public house sense, for young professionals.
I think covid really derailed that and the vibe never quite returned. I'm not sure what people are using for a 'third place' (not home or work) these days but Starbucks is out of fashion and sometimes generally hostile to customer loitering now.
We have other chains here, like Blenz, which are franchised rather than corporate, and the quality is hit or miss. I went to a Blenz location once and got a drink far better than anything else I've had in the city, but most of the time I go there I get something mediocre and poorly-made.
Meanwhile, every latte I get from a Starbucks comes out of an automated espresso machine but it comes out pretty much the same every time. The pastries are all pre-packaged and made at some industrial kitchen probably not even in the same time zone, but, again, they're the same every time. And especially when my son was a baby, my wife and I got into the habit of going to Starbucks very frequently because it was one of the only retail anything that always had changing tables in the bathroom, and, if they had gendered washrooms, always had a changing table in the men's room as well. Every other place was hit or miss, and it didn't take long before I got tired of changing my son on (a changing mat on) a filthy bathroom floor.
Back to drinks, though, there are a lot of other small, independent cafes around, and smaller chains like Artigiano which give you better coffee (or pastries or tea or ...), but they're a lot less commonly found.
Now, all that being said, I would kick a (picture of) a puppy if I could get a Te & Kaffi location in Vancouver; the instant I walked into one for the first time in Iceland it reminded me why I originally liked working in a cafe in my twenties - it felt cozy, comfortable, and it smelled deliciously of fresh coffee. It's a lot rarer to get that here for some reason.
> Business owners just couldn’t see the use case for changing stations. Hilger says he was trying to sell the device to “men in their 50s who never changed a diaper in their life.”
> A new brochure — this one depicting a woman on her hands and knees changing her baby’s diaper on a disgusting bathroom floor– did the trick. “We had to make them feel guilty,” Hilger says.
But everywhere Ive lived (rural New England and now Seattle) there has always been cheaper better coffee available at local shops. It seems that people who like starbucks and people who are into coffee are consumer groups with little crossover
It's the McDonalds of coffee. There are lot of better restaurants than McDonalads for sure but a random restaurant could also be worse. So McDonalds provides some low common denominator consistency. Same with Starbucks, coffee may not be the best and sandwiches are so so, but you know what you're getting there.
I find myself there when I travel to another city and need to grab something on the go. I could sit down and start researching local coffee shops if I have time, but if don't, I can pop in and out of Starbucks and know exactly what I'll get.
I wrote all that in the past tense because none of the things I liked about starbucks is uniformly available any longer.
I think they basically developed a quality brand then just gutted the quality everywhere else to expand and it worked.
I've been to one in Milan, in the old postoffice building right smack in the middle of the city and it has an astounding selection of coffee styles and very cool ambiance [1].
But, yeah, I agree that regular shops are underwhelming and overpriced by local European norms.
It’s very rare to find a local coffee shop in the U.S. with a drive-thru.
They are not hostile to laptops, and overall they have a well-thought out vibe with convenient seating and electricity plugs everywhere
I used to go into smaller coffee shops and it was a 50/50 gamble that I was going to get terrible coffee (though more recently, I've had better luck). At least with Starbucks I knew I was going to get average coffee every single time.
That being said, I make 95% of my coffee at home.
Absolutely. That's why end up going there when I travel and just need to get something quick. I may find a better coffee shop if I have time, or if I wing it, I may end up with some burnt horrible coffee and undercooked sausage (happened before) so I'll just opt to pay more to get the consistency. At home I just brew my own coffee as well.
We're a long way from a five gallon jug of coffee that hasn't been cleaned out since 1982.
When are small coffee shops going to understand, if you have a 1 hour limit on how long I can sit there on my laptop (if you even allow laptops), I’m not going to go to your shop. Coffee doesn’t matter, it’s all the same shit.
Starbucks has never cared if I buy one coffee and then sit there all day.
I don't think this is categorically true, while many are the same, you can definitely taste the difference between different beans and styles of coffee. A latte is very different to a cold brew, for example! Calling it all the same is very dismissive, and more importantly, inaccurate.
Top Tip: Easily avoid said sofa-hogging hipsters. Look for the bike rack full of Penny Farthings outside.
Go to a Workday for your 'co-working vibes'. Take your Macbook Air and Crossley portable turntables with you as well.
Sincerely,
All the other coffee shop patrons.
What about patrons with disabilities? Patrons that might want to use the coffee shop to meet someone and talk to them and socialise?
If you want to use a coffee shop as a work hub either a) go to the office, b) work from home or c) go rent office space or visit a work hub.
Some people...
And yet, there’s definitely times where there’s too many people to find a good place to sit and work for a few hours.
Starbucks understands this tension and seems to create sitting areas that are designed for both types of individuals.
Unlike indie coffeeshops which have the same kind of seating for every customer and says fuck you to remote workers if they linger too long.
This is why I just keep going to Starbucks. It’s a rare example of a big corp being less hostile to customers than equivalent small businesses.