7 ms·

Starbucks Prospers by Keeping Pace with the Coffee Snobs

30 points by zbravo 11y ago

untothebreach 11y ago
FYI, Autoplaying video
- n0us 11y ago
  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"
sschueller 11y ago
Waiting for the day Starbucks carries Kopi Luwak[1]. /sarcasm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
warfangle 11y ago
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.
- amyjess 11y ago
  > 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.
  - hueving 11y ago
    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.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - warfangle 11y ago
      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 :)
  - GavinMcG 11y ago
    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.
    - fintler 11y ago
      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.
  - jderick 11y ago
    I've never seen blonde roast decaf available.
  - warfangle 11y ago
    They don't grind the other roasts for espresso. I like dark roasts. But theirs is crap :)
- ihaveajob 11y ago
  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.
- dpark 11y ago
  >... 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.
  - nsxwolf 11y ago
    I'm assuming he believes the "correct" size for a flat white is 165ml, and Starbucks doesn't offer that size... AFAIK.
    - dpark 11y ago
      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.
    - warfangle 11y ago
      "they". I am not a he.
  - maldusiecle 11y ago
    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.
    - dpark 11y ago
      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.
amyjess 11y ago
> 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.
- Kluny 11y ago
  With the added bonus that you sometimes get the most delightfully colorful people serving your coffee. Really improves the experience for me.
manaskarekar 11y ago
Been happily roasting my own beans for almost two years. I urge anyone interested to give it a shot, there's no going back.
- cheshireoctopus 11y ago
  Any tips/hints for getting started?
  - sageabilly 11y ago
    Sweet Maria's has a great getting started write up, as well as selling green beans and coffee roasting equipment: https://www.sweetmarias.com/ https://www.sweetmarias.com/
  - j_s 11y ago
    How to Make the Best Pourover Coffee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144377 How to Make Perfect Coffee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261639
  - jmhobbs 11y ago
    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.
  - manaskarekar 11y ago
    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/B00006IUWA/ http://www.amazon.com/Presto-04820-PopLite-Hot-Popper/dp/B00...) 3. Experiment! Sweetmaria's is an awesome resource.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
sageabilly 11y ago
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_minute/2007/12/dont_fear_starbucks.single.html 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_regarding_consistency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/119vnt/question_reg... [1]http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know
- 11y ago
waylandsmithers 11y ago
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.
swagv 11y ago
This is an investor relations puff piece if I've ever seen one.
leejoramo 11y ago
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.
- cjrp 11y ago
  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.

30 points by zbravo 11y ago

untothebreach 11y ago

FYI, Autoplaying video

n0us 11y ago
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"

sschueller 11y ago

Waiting for the day Starbucks carries Kopi Luwak[1]. /sarcasm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

warfangle 11y ago

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.

amyjess 11y ago
> 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.
- hueving 11y ago
  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.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - warfangle 11y ago
    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 :)
- GavinMcG 11y ago
  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.
  - fintler 11y ago
    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.
- jderick 11y ago
  I've never seen blonde roast decaf available.
- warfangle 11y ago
  They don't grind the other roasts for espresso. I like dark roasts. But theirs is crap :)
ihaveajob 11y ago
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.
dpark 11y ago
>... 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.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  I'm assuming he believes the "correct" size for a flat white is 165ml, and Starbucks doesn't offer that size... AFAIK.
  - dpark 11y ago
    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.
  - warfangle 11y ago
    "they". I am not a he.
- maldusiecle 11y ago
  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.
  - dpark 11y ago
    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.

amyjess 11y ago

> 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.

Kluny 11y ago
With the added bonus that you sometimes get the most delightfully colorful people serving your coffee. Really improves the experience for me.

manaskarekar 11y ago

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

cheshireoctopus 11y ago
Any tips/hints for getting started?
- sageabilly 11y ago
  Sweet Maria's has a great getting started write up, as well as selling green beans and coffee roasting equipment: https://www.sweetmarias.com/ https://www.sweetmarias.com/
- j_s 11y ago
  How to Make the Best Pourover Coffee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144377 How to Make Perfect Coffee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261639
- jmhobbs 11y ago
  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.
- manaskarekar 11y ago
  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/B00006IUWA/ http://www.amazon.com/Presto-04820-PopLite-Hot-Popper/dp/B00...) 3. Experiment! Sweetmaria's is an awesome resource.
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago

sageabilly 11y ago

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_minute/2007/12/dont_fear_starbucks.single.html 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_regarding_consistency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/119vnt/question_reg... [1]http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

11y ago

waylandsmithers 11y ago

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.

swagv 11y ago

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

leejoramo 11y ago

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.

cjrp 11y ago
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.