Jesse, who has worked at Starbucks for almost a year, has written a mythbusting “Buyer’s Guide” that will help you in your quest to save money when ordering your favorite Starbucks beverage. Our favorite tips? Frappucinos are a rip off, there’s no free ride at the drive-thru, and ordering a latte with chai syrup is cheaper than a chai with espresso.
Consumerist drinks its coffee black, but Jesse obviously loves the complicated world of Starbucks, and if you do too, this is the post for you.
Jesse’s Starbucks Buyer’s Guide
I’ve been working for Starbucks for almost a year, and my love for coffee and free coffee beverages are what keep me there. As much as some people may complain, Starbucks does offer a high quality coffee, even if it comes at a premium price. Here’s my take on some tips for ordering at Starbucks in order to keep prices low and tastebuds happy. I’ll also try to bust down some myths and educate about basic coffee principles.
Myth #1Starbucks coffee tastes burnt.
While it’s true that Starbucks does tend to roast their beans a bit darker than most other coffee places, what you’re tasting isn’t actually “burnt.” The Specialty Coffee Association of America says that standard brewing should have two full tablespoons of coffee for every six ounces of water. Most other coffee shops and restaurants will barely even use half that much coffee. The coffee then ends up tasting much stronger than what most casual coffee drinkers are used to. Choosing the mild coffee of the day isn’t really going to help if you think Starbucks coffee is stronger. The mild coffees tend to have what’s known as a stronger acidity. Acidity refers to the sharp taste on the tongue and how long the flavor of the coffee lasts – not the actual PH balance. If you don’t like the taste of burnt coffee, you’ll probably shy away from Latin American and African coffees which have a higher acidity.What you probably should order is an Americano. An Americano is espresso and hot water to dilute it to the flavor strength of brewed coffee. It’s milder in body and won’t seem as “burnt.”
As far as price goes, standard coffee is the cheapest that you’re going to get at Starbucks. It does seem to be a bit more expensive that other coffee shops, but remember – they’re using more actual coffee. An Americano runs more expensive because making the drink takes more man hours. We’ll break down the cost of espresso later.
Myth #2
Instead of paying higher amounts for iced coffee, I can just buy regular coffee, ask for a cup of ice, and pour the coffee over that.
Iced coffee is brewed double strength before it’s poured over ice in order to give it the regular strength of coffee. If you just buy a regular cup of coffee and pour it over ice, you’re getting extremely week coffee that’s half as strong as it should be.
Myth #3
Going for the Venti espresso drink is a better value.
A Venti drink is twenty ounces. It has two shots of espresso in it. The Specialty Coffee Association of America says that there should be one ounce of espresso for every eight ounces of beverage. This means that there are eighteen ounces of milk for two ounces of espresso – that’s a lot of milk! The only drink sizes that meet the SCAA regulations are the eight once Short that has one shot and the sixteen ounce Grande that has two shots. The tall is twelve ounces and also only has one shot. Because Starbucks follows SCAA guidelines strictly, they won’t put two shots into a tall or three shots into a Venti because that technically would be too much espresso.
What people don’t realize is that Starbucks even offers the Short. Back in the day, there were only two sizes – short and tall. As our American appetites grew, so did the size of our drinks. But the short is actually a lot closer to the size of what a traditional latte would be. It’s also a couple dollars cheaper than going for the Venti.
Now my personal preference is one ounce of espresso to every four ounces of beverage – but I like my drinks strong and I get them for free.
The Truth About Espresso and the Great Frappucino Swindle:
A few years ago, Starbucks made the jump to automatic espresso machines. Standard procedure for pulling a shot of espresso requires grinding into the portafilter, tamping it down, locking it into the espresso machine, and pressing the button to start the water. The Starbucks machine does all of this with the touch of one button – it also stores the coffee grounds as compressed pucks in a drawer that needs to be emptied only twice a day. This saves a lot of time for baristas, especially when there’s a long line. The shots themselves are very good for an automatic machine. But these machines cost about ten thousand dollars apiece compared to about three thousand for a quality manual commercial grade espresso machine. That’s a lot of money to recoup at about two dollars for a double shot. Not to mention that Starbucks also pays its employees a higher wage than most coffee shops because they don’t make as much tips working at Starbucks. The cost of operating a Starbucks is astronomical. But the quality is there.
Even with the cost of these machines, Starbucks doesn’t charge much more than your local coffeeshop. In fact, sometimes it’s cheaper. And the way they recoup these costs? Frappucinos. A Frappucino is a blended coffee beverage that most people find quite tasty. But what the hell is actually inside it? Standard Frappucino recipe relies on using a Frappucino Base and ice, along with a pump of the flavor syrup of your choice. And the Frappucino Base? First you add instant coffee to water. Then you pour in a box of Frappucino Mix, which lists its first ingredients as “Milk Ingerdients.” The amount of high fructose corn syrup and strange processed food materials in these things is scary. And the best part? They will run you about four bucks a piece. It doesn’t cost barely anything to make one, but you better believe that they’re going to overcharge you for it. And because the Frappucino base is already extremely sweetened, the recipe only calls for one pump of syrup even though you’ll be charged the full thirty cents. A Tall drink usually gets three, a Grande four, and a Venti gets five pumps.
If you like cold drinks, try an iced latte or a mocha. It won’t taste as sweet, but here’s the best part – if you pay for syrup, you can ask for as much as you want as long as it’s only one type! Standard Starbucks practice is to charge for each type of syrup used not how much of each. You can avoid this by asking for half and half – if you like the taste of Vanilla and Hazelnut, ask for half Vanilla and half Hazelnut – this will help from being overcharged.
Other tips for money saving:
Soy milk costs more. Organic milk costs more. They’re tastier, but also cost more.
If you like the taste of espresso with a chai latte, ask them to ring it up as a latte with chai syrup added instead of a chai latte with espresso added. Espresso costs about fifty cents to add a shot while syrup is only thirty cents. If you get a Grande latte, you already get two shots and only add thirty cents for the chai syrup. If you get a Grande chai latte and add two shots, you’re adding about a dollar to the drink.
Try to do the math – sometimes it’s cheaper to ask to be rung up as a larger size instead of a small size with an added shot. It never hurts to ask – Starbucks employees are people too and probably don’t want to overcharge you.
Don’t use the drive-thru. If you use the drive thru, every single modifier gets added on the computer, otherwise your drink won’t be made right. Usually asking for soy milk as a creamer is free, and you can ask them to put whipped cream on anything for free as well, but if you go through the drive-thru you bet your sweet bippy you’ll get charged for it.
And finally – try it without a flavoring! Milk is inherently sweet because of lactose and only gets sweeter once steamed. You don’t always need a vanilla latte and after ten drinks it’s like you’re getting a free Tall latte! Once you get used to the flavor of espresso and milk, then you’re one step closer to order regular brewed coffee which is as cheap as you go.
However, if you’re a tea drinker you’re in luck. Hot and iced tea are just about the same price as coffee.
-Jesse
(Photo: Beautiful Machine)
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“Starbucks coffee tastes burnt.” It doesn’t really matter to me why Starbucks coffee tastes burnt to me, it just does. It’s hard to dismiss a myth that is really a personal preference. And telling me to order a more expensive drink is silly; instead, I’ll go somewhere else where I can have the coffee I like for the price I like.
@Shadowman615: ice cubes made of coffee would also do the trick.
I worked as a barista and a I know what’s in the sbux frappucino, but that doesn’t stop me from getting a caramel cream affagato when I want a ridiculous sounding treat. Mmm…
Fraps also come in decaf, which is something a lot of people don’t seem to know. When I worked there you couldn’t get decaf and ‘lite’ but that might have changed.
Here’s a REAL tip for you latte lovers: get a double shot of espresso (or single, if you prefer); ask for it in a larger cup or get a cup of ice if you like it cold, then go to the condiment bar and add your own sugar and milk. A four dollar latte for about half the price!
I worked at a corner coffee shop a long time ago. We had a frappucino-type blended drink. All it was was a powder you blended with ice. I once saw the invoice when the delivery guy came around and the big tub of powder was like $10. From that tub you could get about 100 blended drinks as each drink was only one scoop of powder. Each blended drink was $3.50. That is some MAJOR profit margin.
@slapstick: Actually, that trick only works for iced lattes, I forgot the whole ‘steamed milk’ thing. But if you’re not picky, then you can have a ghetto latte, or a ghelatte, as I fondly call it.
I have an even more effective tip on cutting costs:
Cure yourself of the dependancy.
@mantene: I agree! I am not a “casual” coffee drinker. I started my coffee education years ago on Usenet, reading alt.drugs.caffeine, and since then have learned quite a bit about good coffee. Starbucks coffee tastes burnt! I don’t care if it’s from an actual Starbucks store or bought as whole-bean coffee at the supermarket, it’s all way over-roasted and tastes like ass. You can see it if you buy the whole beans – they’re darker and more oily than comparable beans from any decent coffee outlet.
Starbucks is mass-marketed hype, pure and simple. Given the choice between Starbucks coffee and Dunkin Donuts, I’ll take the Dunkin.
My first experience with “good” coffee was with Starbucks roughly six years ago. Until that point, I’d really only ever had your standard grocery store freeze-dried garbage. For a while, I was happy with Starbucks until about three years ago when I noticed a dramatic downturn in quality. This was right about the time I moved to Chicago and was able to get my coffee fix from Intelligentsia on a more frequently basis and about the time Starbucks started their big espresso machine refresh which removed the semi-auto machines and replaced them with the auto ones. Big mistake.
Not only does this remove the accountability and quality control from their baristas, if the machine isn’t calibrated correctly it pulls really awful espresso shots. And by awful I mean really, really awful. I used to drink Americanos on the regular as I find they drink like a freshly brewed cup of coffee, now I can’t even stand them from Starbucks. If I order anything from there at all (and it is merely the convenience factor because they have a store in my office lobby) it’s a small coffee which I add half and half to and I like my coffee black.
Whether their beans are actually burnt, they are definitely over-roasted to mask something, by that the quality of the beans or the age. If you don’t believe me, compare similar roasts from Starbucks and a couple local Chicago roasteries, Intelligentsia and Metropolis. I think you’ll find who the clear loser in this competition is.
To anyone that pays attention, it is obvious Starbucks has sacrificed quality for higher profits, and the skills baristas need to deliver an actual coffee shop experience. They, including the “sender” of the original article are no longer baristas: they are cashiers and glorified button pushers.
If anyone ever finds themselves in my beloved city of Chicago, I urge you to head into Intelligentsia for a real cup.
(Metropolis is good to, but not as good as Intelligentsia)
Supertaster is a real term, douche bags.
I say Jesse is an indoctrinated “partner”, not a PR punk.
@bdgbill:
I can’t tell if you’re being skeptical, or if you haven’t heard of supertasters before.
There does seem to be some objective, biological basis in the phenomenon. It certainly seems to have some pretty solid basis in fact. What is your objection?
@Greg P:
Stop proactively copying me.
@bdgbill: Also, Starbucks coffee DOES NOT taste “burnt”. It tastes like coffee. Americans are used to drinking 32 oz buckets of diluted dishwater from Dunkin Donuts and have no idea what real coffee tastes like.
You’re entirely wrong (and I suspect you’re an American, too, but one who happens to be an elitist hipster jackass), but I’m going to let it all go because that description of typical coffee is the funniest thing I’ve read all day! You get points for that no matter what. As they say down at DS-MAX, juice to you!
“You bash Starbucks coffee as “burnt” because it makes you look knowledgeable in the eyes of your cohort of coffee snobs.”
I bash Starbuck’s coffee as burnt because it tastes burnt. Caribou, for instance, has roasts ranging from the lightest Kenya to the dark French Roast, and none of them taste burnt despite their using a half pound per batch. I sometimes get the darkest roasts cut with a little water there, but not because they taste burnt.
I agree that these “confessions” smack of a PR drone putting out fires (though they might want to capture those fires to further denigrate their beans! LOL).
I buy my coffee at the grocery store and make it at home. It’s not the best but it does the job in the morning. I can’t remember the last time I was even in a Starbuck’s.
It’s just coffee. Geez.
People have their preferences I guess..
Amusing trivia regarding the “Americano” — its name was originally intended as an insult! My father grew up in Italy during and after the Second World War, and remembers fondly the roving packs of US GIs in the streets. The coffee the locals drank pretty much blew the tops of their heads off, so the baristas started watering it down for them and called the new drink an “Americano,” always snickering as they did so.
I’m of two minds about the dark/burnt comments. On the one hand, Starbucks does literally overroast (thus, “burn”) their beans to standardize the flavor, which means even the medium and light roasts are essentially dark roasts. That ain’t good, and you can taste it in the weird combination of strong+watery, like putting caffeine pills in a cup of watered-down coffee.
On the other hand, I like my coffee really, really fucking strong. Americans are still crawling out of the prehistoric era of Folgers-style coffee roasting (robusta beans, anyone?), and, overall, make coffee that’s too goddamned weak. As far as I am concerned, espresso is coffee, and what we Americans know as “coffee” is just an irritatingly weak substitution for the real stuff. So, although most of you commenters sound pretty knowledgeable about the meaning of “burnt”, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard morons complain that the high-quality espresso they’re drinking tastes “burnt”–as opposed to recognizing their inability to appreciate the essence of the bean that espresso (when done properly) delivers.
One example of Europe’s coffee superiority: I recently went to an academic conference in France, and every “coffee” break only served espressos! Beautiful!
How is this a confession? Will tomorrow’s confession be from a Comcast dispatcher that reveals that the 8:00am to 1:00pm window is actually very small and that we should be understanding?
Shame, shame for consumerist to post this.
Myth #2: Ice Coffee is cheaper than Regular Coffee.
This insider does not mention that classic syrup is added to the iced Coffee.
You forgot Cream Frappuccinos.
@Greg P: “Supertaster is a real term, douche bags.”
Oops! You have a typo. You mistakenly typed a comma when you meant to type “for”.
@bdgbill:
I was going to write pretty much the same thing with “dishwater” and all but you stole the words right out of my mouth! Starbucks’ coffee tastes like real coffee. Those who can’t stand it can buy dishwater somewhere else.
People seem to be crapping on Dunkin here. I can’t say how good/bad their coffee is (since the ones within 100 miles closed), but here’s something interesting – did you know they make the majority of their money off coffee? They’re a donut shop! That never ceases to amaze me.
I’m not a coffee connisseur, although I like it strong, put me squarely in the “starbucks tastes burnt” category. I prefer Caribou, which is little better in terms of being a mega-chain.
@Shadowman615: You can also mix water with a bunch of ground coffee in a jug, let it brew overnight in your fridge, and then strain the whole lot in a french press to get coffee concentrate. It’s extremely strong and very smooth, even when made with your standard folgers crap. Google it for some recipes.
C’mon fellows, everyone’s taste in coffee is different. Starbucks’ problem is that it’s inconsistent, which is worse than having a roast that can’t appeal to everybody. All I drink is standard, black, American coffee with no pollutants, and I know what I like, don’t like, type of roast, grain size, and water temperature suits me perfectly. Granted, you can’t be that picky unless you’re at home. Given that, I know that sometimes Starbucks’ coffee is pretty darned good (not like Canadian Tim Horton’s, though [not US Tim's]), and other times it really, really is burnt tasting. You never know what you’re going to get. Okay, I’ll admit the possibility that the stores I’ve gone to maybe aren’t run right; maybe there should be more consistency; maybe they don’t store it right before serving. It doesn’t matter what the excuse is — when you’re drinking the unadultered stuff, it’s got to be consistent.
These confessions from an employee who’s only worked there for a year?
I have friends who have been worked at SB for at least 3 years and would happily write something like this.
These comments are filled with well thought out and factual rebuttals that are lost to anyone without the patience to go through all the comments.
What Consumerist (and every largescale comment-based blog) needs is someone to filter and summarize the comments.
Either that or you guys need to pony up with a rebuttal.
My two cents: While I agree that Starbucks coffee is overroasted and frankly gross, you can’t accuse the guy of being a PR shill if he’s basically telling you their most profitable product (the frappucino) is a disgusting pile of crap. Deluded, yes, shill, no.
I call BS!
Oh, PR PR PR PR…..androgynous Jesse, how are you oh-so-knowledgable?
..I like frappechinos…
Do you think if I ordered like a latte, and asked them to blend it with ice and whipped cream, that they would do it for me? From what she said, it sounds like my icey guilty pleasure completely negates the pseudo organic life style I try to lead. D:
Maybe they’ll even put raspberry syrup in it…
The PJs chains have good coffee, and local shops tend to have the best… I never really liked Starbucks, so why I’m worrying I have no idea.
Pfft. Jesse had some good info, but didn’t get down to the nitty gritty. I was a barista for almost 3 years at a really disfunctional store and here’s my list:
1. Don’t buy frappuccinos. They have as much caffeine as a soda and as much sugar as a candy bar. So unless you deem consuming sodas and candy a healthy way to “wake up” at 6 am, don’t drink them.
2. You can order an iced americano with no water/ extra ice, then add your own milk/ cream to the drink at the bar. Voila! You have just created “The Poor Man’s Latte.” Yes, it will be cheap, but the baristas will hate you and may pour you bad shots if you don’t tip accordingly. You’re also drinking the milk that’s been sitting on the bar for who-knows-how-long….
3. If you order the “mild” coffee after around 10 am, you might get the regular coffee with a little bit of hot water added to cut the taste. It is just easier than brewing a new batch and no one ever notices the difference. (Bad baristas at my store were known to give people decaf if the regular was out and we were either a) really busy or b) less than an hour away from closing).
4. PLEASE CHECK THE NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF ANYTHING YOU CONSUME! This one is major. All the information is available: all you have to do is ask (preferably not in the middle of a rush). A slice of the bannana nut loaf seems innocent enough, but contains something like 600 calories. Any venti drink with whipped cream? My gawd… it is all bad. If you’re hungry, stick to bagels and biscotti (especially if it is your everyday breakfast stop).
5. Syrup… A hot topic of debate recently, it seems. A standard drink has the following amounts of syrup: tall: 3 grande:4 venti (hot): 5 venti(iced): 6 So a barista shouldn’t charge you for syrup if it is 1/2 or less of the normal amount of pumps. If it is double or more than the normal amount, they will charge you twice. And yes, there are many, many people out there that will get 12 pumps of vanilla in a drink, which is nasty.
I have more, but this is too long for the comments and I think no one even reads the comments this far down.
Here’s the best Starbucks tip I’ve ever heard: Buy one of those Starbucks gift cards, keep a decent balance on it, and use it to pay every time. When you pay with a gift card, you’re not expected to tip.
Does that make me an asshole? Probably.
@superlayne: “Do you think if I ordered like a latte, and asked them to blend it with ice and whipped cream, that they would do it for me?”
They would do it for you, but the drink would be so disgusting. It would separate in about 2 minutes and just be gross. Try something iced if you like cold drinks. You have more healthy options and, because they melt slower, you have longer to drink your drink. Also, the consistency will always be the same, so you’ll never have to deal with sucking on ice chunks.
I’m not a $bux super-fan or anything, but I’ll admit, my favourite local coffee is 2$ for a 16 ounce and starbucks is 1.77$ for theirs.
I’m just sayin.’
Also, I worked at starbucks for 2 years in college:
1. Everything Jesse says is, like, straight out of the “learning journey” and “coffee workshop” books.
2. People who get really into working at Starbucks are creepy. I know a few.
I’ll jump on the “it’s Starbucks PR man!” bandwagon. Being blessed to live in Seattle, I’ve seen the Starbucks behemoth on its home turf and their performance–as far as coffee is concerned–is supremely sub-par.
Compare that “pour hot milk onto espresso shots and then scoop hard foam on top” coffee beverage to the free-pour cappuccino you’ll find at a neighborhood coffee shop. You know, the place with the barista who drinks coffee for flavor instead of the constant caffeine supply (they’re the ones with a few shots and some water behind the counter, not the overly made-up teenies bopping around behind a Starbucks bar cradling their fifth venti caramel Frappucino with extra raspberry syrup). I definitely know which one I appreciate.
Even Starbucks’ top boys and girls are now admitting that they’ve moved away from being a coffee shop to a fast moving conveyor belt of customers purchasing over-roasted, increasingly-diluted beverages and pre-made but heated to order food items. All of which are carefully manipulated by various marketing teams ( I once heard an employee talking about the controversy with new “hot” foods and their smell interfering with the artificially piped coffee roasting aromas). If that sounds to anyone like a coffee shop, let them continue enjoying their “coffee.”
No, it tastes burnt.
I’ve never had a cup of coffee anywhere that tastes burnt like Starbucks coffee does. This includes Dunkin Donuts, yes, but it also includedes coffee shops in NYC, it includes homemade coffee from a variety of beans, it includes homemade coffee from both K-Cups and T-Discs, it includes coffee from a variety of shops in Boston, it includes coffee from a variety of diners in NJ, it includes Hawaiian coffee prepared with some weird contraption (I believe also from Hawaii) by my dad, and for crying out loud, it even includes coffee from shops in England, shops in France, and homes in France.
In short, I’ve had a LOT of coffee, and none of it – ever – has tasted like the shit that Starbucks dishes out. If you like it, fine, but don’t justify it by calling it something it isn’t. It’s burnt. It shouldn’t be. Period.
PS: In every example given, I drink my coffee black with so little sugar that I never trust the person preparing or serving the coffee to add it themselves; they will inevitably add too much. So, what I’m trying to say here is, I drink my coffee pretty “pure”, and I love it. Except at Starbucks. Where it’s burnt.
“Supertaster is a real term, douche bags.”
Oops! You have a typo. You mistakenly typed a comma when you meant to type “for”.
A tip of the hat to you, sir.
@ediebeale:
I’m also calling BS, I worked for starbucks for over five years (i left in 2003), and he’s either:
1. intoxicated on the kool-aid
2. a shill from PR
3. still new on the job
Starbucks coffee tastes burnt for 2 reasons:
over roasting
over oxidation
the coffee you buy there is not fresh and is over roasted, for the most part.
and all the “time saving” and “economizing” steps they’ve taken have only made the coffee taste worse. the espresso, you can’t even call it that anymore, not with the new super automatics.
*sigh* I offered Ben a real “confessions” article on starbucks, I don’t know why he would give this guy any bandwidth.
I normally support local coffee shops. They usually have more unique tasting coffee, they are more comfortable and usually have free wifi.
I’m sorry. I take that back. I actually have had coffee elsewhere that tastes like Starbucks (Which is how, class? That’s right, burnt). It was McDonald’s.
@sifr:
Peet’s taught starbucks about coffee, and in fact used to sell starbucks their coffee. Peet’s has been around for at least 40 years and is a staple in NorCal.
Friends of mine in Oakland and SanFran swear by peet’s, and having tasted it, I know why.
I’ve always said starbucks is the worst and best thing that has ever happened to coffee. they raised the bar, they introduced America’s palate to gourmet coffee, and then sadly lost their way as quarterly earnings and merchandise tie-ins took precedence over the quality of the coffee.
It is burnt…well over roasted.
Roasting the beans a shade or two darker than ideal is a very common way to hide less than ideal beans or a poor mixture of new and old beans.
Shocking news there, Starbucks uses less than ideal beans. Who would have guessed?
I am lucky in that I live near two roasters so I never have to buy Starbucks or other beans which are already old when they are on the shelf or arrive at the store.
The difference in taste is very significant compared to the pre-packaged coffees. While the air release nipple on the mylar packages is a great invention to keep the coffee from becoming stale over long periods it also releases a lot of the flavour with it. It just can’t compare to fresh roasted.
@pestie: “Starbucks is mass-marketed hype, pure and simple. Given the choice between Starbucks coffee and Dunkin Donuts, I’ll take the Dunkin.”
Irony at its finest.
@cheesyfru: I already know the beauty of a good yirgacheffe, but if you live anywhere near Chicago I will gladly take you up on your offer. Also, if you do live in Chicago or ever come here, the yirgacheffe at Metropolis coffee is excellent. The neighborhood Ethiopians taught them how to roast it right.
There’s a fine line between PR shill and over-enthusiastic employee. Engage your brains for a moment and try to figure out why a company on the greener side of a double-digit lead in market share over the competition, a huge foodservice company that’s never advertised on television, would really care enough about a single blog to send a public relations person its way. Why? What purpose would it serve?
I know it’s fun to think there’s an OMGCONSPIRACY around every corner. The truth of the matter is that the company creates a slick internal marketing experience that compels employes — oops, I mean “partners” — to evangelize the company to a degree that’s somewhat embarassing from an outsider’s perspective.
I worked at Starbucks corporate HQ in Seattle, just as a temp job. I was offered a permanent position there, the day after my department got its introduction to something called the “Green Apron Book,” and that was enough to convince me to decline the offer.
What truly mystifies me is why Starbucks provokes such a heated response any time it’s mentioned here. So much drama over a cup of coffee (and let’s not ever mention raspberry syrup again, thanks).
@nequam: OH SNAP.
What truly mystifies me is why Starbucks provokes such a heated response any time it’s mentioned here. So much drama over a cup of coffee (and let’s not ever mention raspberry syrup again, thanks).
I’m going to guess a lot of the Starbucks hostility has to do with “Confession” #1. Personally, I was pretty unhappy when Starbucks started putting local coffee shops out of business, but I didn’t blame them for it. It just made me sad.
But when they start calling people who don’t like their coffee pathetic noobs, and claim we’re just used to weak American diner coffee or something, it’s pathetic and a little offensive.
Starbucks is a coffee shop for people who don’t like coffee. That’s why most of their drinks are just milkshakes and stuff.
take this pr fluff piece and shove it up your frappuccino.
I think Starbucks just has admit that they’ve become the McDonald’s of coffee. The Taco Bell of Mexican. Everyone knows that for a good burger, you go to that bar down the street that has a good happy hour and the thickest, juiciest burger one could ever hope to buy. But, in a pinch, when you’re really hungry, you get a Big Mac. It’s not a burger…it’s a Big Mac. This is what S’Bux coffee has turned into. I know what GOOD coffee is…I like to have GOOD coffee…but most days, I just need a go-between for my caffeine and sugar intake. So, for a quick caffeine fix, I hit S’Bux. For real coffee treat (because, like the bar, in a real coffee house you can’t get coffee to go), I go to the Albanian place a block away.
Just order the “mild” of the day and you won’t get “burned” flavor. The burned flavor is from the roasting (or some would consider overroasting) of some of the bold or even extra bold coffees. I went to coffee class. I’ve been working there for the last four years.
A chai without water tastes different than a regular chai. I’ve tried to get customers to order a latte add chai to save money, but then it isn’t made correctly as a chai because it does not have any water. You are getting more milk, which costs more to make than water if that’s what you’re after… According to Tazo, the chai manufacturer, the chai concentrate is supposedly “activated” by the temperature of the hot water which is closer to boiling where as the temperature of the milk should only be between 140-160.
The drive through is not that bad and you will NEVER be charged for whipped cream. If you want half one syrup and half another, they should be able to ring it up correctly as a cost free substitution, but many new employees may not have learned that yet. Cheap people prefer the drive through because they never feel obligated to leave a tip.
While we’re all doing a pile-on…
I’ve never heard anyone outside of Starbucks PR department going on about those constant references to the SCAA. Some of their “rules” are ridiculous. “Two tablespoons of coffee per six ounces of water”? If you’re using decent beans, freshly ground, a tablespoon per is plenty. One ounce of espresso for eight ounces of beverage? Thanks, as the person who’s drinking it, that’s *my* decision, not yours. Sheesh.
@nequam: Yeah, really. I didn’t come up with the name, or it’d be less spiffy-sounding.
I’ve tried Starbucks, I’ve tried most off-the-shelf stuff at the supermarket, and then I’ve tried some of the good stuff (which my work orders through a distributer), and then I realized that coffee doesn’t taste like the swill I’d been downing all this time.
I feel sorry for those who can’t tell the difference.
@Greg P: @spanky: Ah, thanks. Hadn’t noticed your comments when I replied.