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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

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.

ausbah 1y ago
i think it’s mostly for american tourists
- morkalork 1y ago
  Which is really sad, when I go to Europe I love trying all the different types of pastries you can get at the coffee shops there. A strudel with an intensely sour filling is not something you will find in North America for example.
- quantumwannabe 1y ago
  It most definitely is not. The vast majority of customers at European Starbucks are locals, not tourists.
  - ausbah 1y ago
    that is indeed sad
mothballed 1y ago
The ones in Seattle were solid. Not sure why, but I could never order a coffee from any of the other ones again after that, it seemed like the rest were fake ripoffs. I think they basically developed a quality brand then just gutted the quality everywhere else to expand and it worked.
Poomba 1y ago
For me, I just order a drink when my wife stops by one to order one. I hardly go out of my way to order it myself. Everything from the drinks to the pastries are mediocre
deadbabe 1y ago
I go to Starbucks for the co-working vibes, not the coffee. 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.
- austinallegro 1y ago
  Thank God for coffee shops that impose time limits, lest patrons visiting for a coffee and a sit-down have to walk on by because the hipsters in their bollock-strangling denim, plaid shirts and a Crossley turntable tucked under their arm are already hogging the place. 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.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    I don’t get it, if you go to a coffee shop for the coffee, why wouldn’t you just get your coffee and go? You’re complaining that other people are sitting… because you also want to sit? What else are you going to do? Sit and scroll through your phone?
    - austinallegro 1y ago
      As opposed to sitting on an overpriced laptop all day taking up space other people might want to use as well as costing a business time and money in lost custom so you can spend the day treating the coffee shop like rented office space? 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...
      - deadbabe 1y ago
kimfc 1y ago
at least in america I think it’s a consumer comfort thing. Like no matter where you are you can get close to the exact same sugar-coffee-cream-drink-thing at any starbucks on the continent, and it’s not really about having actually good coffee (their drip coffee is actually terrible). 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
travisd 1y ago
Starbucks is airport drink/food for me. Being able to order as I enter the TSA line and pick it up on the way to the gate is unmatched convenience, and the coffee options at airports generally aren't great.
kellyjprice 1y ago
Starbucks raised the bar for coffee in the US. In most cities big and small, there's better alternatives now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee
- abcd_f 1y ago
  Starbucks exploded also because there was a void created by anti-smoking campaigns. People needed a healthier vice and something to do on their smoke breaks - et voilà, Starbucks offered just that.
nine_zeros 1y ago
I am in America - I genuinely liked some of their flavors, fast service, and happy demeanor of baristas. It always felt like a familiar nice escape from the grind. I wrote all that in the past tense because none of the things I liked about starbucks is uniformly available any longer.
- gowld 1y ago
  It's anything but an escape from the grind.
ecshafer 1y ago
In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks. Starbucks doesn't make good coffee, however they're main competitors in the US are basically Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, or various regional/local chains. So they are often better than the competitors, since Dunkin Donuts is not as consistent of quality, and McDonalds isn't really a cafe (despite being one of the largest coffee sellers). A lot of local places also close at like 2 or 3 pm, so if I want to grab a coffee at 3 pm, or meet a friend I don't have a ton of options. 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.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  > In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks. 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.
  - mint5 1y ago
    > a triple shot 20oz drink This isn’t something any coffee shop should be serving. It’s like a big gulp 64 ounce soda, it shouldn’t exist.
- klik99 1y ago
  I agree the coffee at starbucks isn't great, but I feel the coffee at dunkin and mcdonalds are both better than starbucks. I like black coffee though, and Starbucks drip or americano just isn't good - I see starbucks more as a desert place than a coffee place, and judged on that they're good. I think more people want sweet milky coffees, and that's fine. That plus the environment is a big pull of Starbucks. It's not my thing, but I get why people like it 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
mips_avatar 1y ago
This has changed, it used to be that Starbucks was the only decent coffee in most towns. The thing is there's now so many coffee enthusiasts who grew up in the third wave of coffee that you can easily start and staff a great local coffee shop
danudey 1y ago
I live in Canada and the main reason I like Starbucks is that its consistent. It's not great coffee or great pastries or great whatever else, but it's always the same. 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.
- jzebedee 1y ago
  Interestingly, this was the marketing behind Koala Kare's rise to a monopoly over the bathroom baby changing station: > 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. https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/ https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/
- brailsafe 1y ago
  Vancouver has a great coffee scene, better than most cities imo in terms of spread of types, prices, availability. A recent one I've been liking lately is Doe Roasters on Hastings, but Moja and JJBean are great too between $3-6 CAD for good filter coffee, presumably a bit more for espresso-based drinks.
keiferski 1y ago
Starbucks is pretty popular in Europe, even in places with better coffee. That’s because it’s better thought of as a combination between energy drinks and dessert, not a competitor to third-wave coffee shops or espresso bars. The vast, vast majority of their customers are not buying black coffee.
paxys 1y ago
In the US Starbucks is almost always the cheapest option in the area for decent coffee.
- bombcar 1y ago
  Upscale gas station coffee has improve tremendously in the last ten years
  - PNWcossack 1y ago
    I agree, I went on a road trip recently and drank a lot of coffee on the road. a lot of it was from McDonalds, but I was pleasantly surprised how all the machines at the gas stations were freshly brewed coffee at the push of a button. I would have never conceived that gas stations would one day have consistently decent coffee 10 years ago.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      I think it's a combination of gas stations realizing that they need to "upscale and branch out" because eventually at some point cars won't be going to them as often, and major advancements (e.g., getting cheaper) for robotic machines that can make coffee. We're a long way from a five gallon jug of coffee that hasn't been cleaned out since 1982.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 1y ago
They have passable coffee but I think they actually did a good job of curating a good place to simply be. 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.
- o_nate 1y ago
  Two of the three Starbucks locations in my home town removed all of the seating. Across the street from one of them, an independent coffee shop opened up with lots of seating. Whenever I walk by the Starbucks is empty and there are a lot of people inside the independent shop. I have to wonder about their strategy.
jorisboris 1y ago
Its not for the coffee They are not hostile to laptops, and overall they have a well-thought out vibe with convenient seating and electricity plugs everywhere
- tim333 1y ago
  I used to hang out there a lot due to laptop friendliness and the like. There are so many competing places for that now though.
- tetris11 1y ago
  Exactly. People go to Starbucks for the WiFi and the juice
RyanOD 1y ago
It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency. 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.
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency. 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.
- projectazorian 1y ago
  Yeah, I never go to Starbucks at home, but frequently do on the road. Much of this country is still a wasteland when it comes to good coffee and Starbucks reliably has adequate quality coffee and clean bathrooms.
rdtsc 1y ago
> I never understood Starbucks 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.
- tetris11 1y ago
  Off topic, but McDonalds actually serves better and cheaper coffee..
  - PNWcossack 1y ago
    I agree, the last road trip I went on, where I clocked around 1700 miles, I actuality prefer going to a McDonald over SB to get a large coffee. Cheaper and tastes less burnt for a drip.
heymijo 1y ago
Our car culture in the U.S. means drive thrus can capture a significant portion of sales. Starbucks/Dunkin/McDonald’s do that. It’s very rare to find a local coffee shop in the U.S. with a drive-thru.
- wk_end 1y ago
  Depends on where you are in the US. Here in the PNW it’s common - including ones where, oddly, the baristas are all young women in bikinis.
  - PNWcossack 1y ago
    "The baristas are all young women in bikinis"? what coffees shops are you going to in the PNW?
    - wk_end 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista
Yeul 1y ago
Starbucks was a novelty in the Netherlands of the mid 90s but Dutch people are masters in assimilating and adapting foreign ideas and there are several competing chains now.
cedws 1y ago
I went to Starbucks a lot in Japan because they have a lot of nice non-coffee drinks and have fast + reliable WiFi. A lot of young people go there to work and study too so I didn’t feel out of place.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
It's not about the coffee because it's a lifestyle brand that sells pseudo-prestige to the pseudo-affluent. It's overpriced and a marginal product.
abcd_f 1y ago
Starbucks Reserves are quite impressive though. 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. [1] https://www.roastery.starbucks.it/ https://www.roastery.starbucks.it/
- DarkNova6 1y ago
  Never knew that was a thing, looks nice!
verzali 1y ago
The coffee is bad but they don't complain if I sit there and work for six hours. I usually see the price as paying for that, not the coffee. Though I do prefer good local coffee shops when I find them, but I feel bad about taking up a table for hours without paying much.

ausbah 1y ago

i think it’s mostly for american tourists

morkalork 1y ago
Which is really sad, when I go to Europe I love trying all the different types of pastries you can get at the coffee shops there. A strudel with an intensely sour filling is not something you will find in North America for example.
quantumwannabe 1y ago
It most definitely is not. The vast majority of customers at European Starbucks are locals, not tourists.
- ausbah 1y ago
  that is indeed sad

mothballed 1y ago

The ones in Seattle were solid. Not sure why, but I could never order a coffee from any of the other ones again after that, it seemed like the rest were fake ripoffs. I think they basically developed a quality brand then just gutted the quality everywhere else to expand and it worked.

Poomba 1y ago

For me, I just order a drink when my wife stops by one to order one. I hardly go out of my way to order it myself. Everything from the drinks to the pastries are mediocre

deadbabe 1y ago

I go to Starbucks for the co-working vibes, not the coffee. 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.

austinallegro 1y ago
Thank God for coffee shops that impose time limits, lest patrons visiting for a coffee and a sit-down have to walk on by because the hipsters in their bollock-strangling denim, plaid shirts and a Crossley turntable tucked under their arm are already hogging the place. 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.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  I don’t get it, if you go to a coffee shop for the coffee, why wouldn’t you just get your coffee and go? You’re complaining that other people are sitting… because you also want to sit? What else are you going to do? Sit and scroll through your phone?
  - austinallegro 1y ago
    As opposed to sitting on an overpriced laptop all day taking up space other people might want to use as well as costing a business time and money in lost custom so you can spend the day treating the coffee shop like rented office space? 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...
    - deadbabe 1y ago

kimfc 1y ago

at least in america I think it’s a consumer comfort thing. Like no matter where you are you can get close to the exact same sugar-coffee-cream-drink-thing at any starbucks on the continent, and it’s not really about having actually good coffee (their drip coffee is actually terrible). 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

travisd 1y ago

Starbucks is airport drink/food for me. Being able to order as I enter the TSA line and pick it up on the way to the gate is unmatched convenience, and the coffee options at airports generally aren't great.

kellyjprice 1y ago

Starbucks raised the bar for coffee in the US. In most cities big and small, there's better alternatives now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee

abcd_f 1y ago
Starbucks exploded also because there was a void created by anti-smoking campaigns. People needed a healthier vice and something to do on their smoke breaks - et voilà, Starbucks offered just that.

nine_zeros 1y ago

I am in America - I genuinely liked some of their flavors, fast service, and happy demeanor of baristas. It always felt like a familiar nice escape from the grind. I wrote all that in the past tense because none of the things I liked about starbucks is uniformly available any longer.

gowld 1y ago
It's anything but an escape from the grind.

ecshafer 1y ago

In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks. Starbucks doesn't make good coffee, however they're main competitors in the US are basically Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, or various regional/local chains. So they are often better than the competitors, since Dunkin Donuts is not as consistent of quality, and McDonalds isn't really a cafe (despite being one of the largest coffee sellers). A lot of local places also close at like 2 or 3 pm, so if I want to grab a coffee at 3 pm, or meet a friend I don't have a ton of options. 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.

thewebguyd 1y ago
> In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks. 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.
- mint5 1y ago
  > a triple shot 20oz drink This isn’t something any coffee shop should be serving. It’s like a big gulp 64 ounce soda, it shouldn’t exist.
klik99 1y ago
I agree the coffee at starbucks isn't great, but I feel the coffee at dunkin and mcdonalds are both better than starbucks. I like black coffee though, and Starbucks drip or americano just isn't good - I see starbucks more as a desert place than a coffee place, and judged on that they're good. I think more people want sweet milky coffees, and that's fine. That plus the environment is a big pull of Starbucks. It's not my thing, but I get why people like it 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

mips_avatar 1y ago

This has changed, it used to be that Starbucks was the only decent coffee in most towns. The thing is there's now so many coffee enthusiasts who grew up in the third wave of coffee that you can easily start and staff a great local coffee shop

danudey 1y ago

I live in Canada and the main reason I like Starbucks is that its consistent. It's not great coffee or great pastries or great whatever else, but it's always the same. 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.

jzebedee 1y ago
Interestingly, this was the marketing behind Koala Kare's rise to a monopoly over the bathroom baby changing station: > 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. https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/ https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/
brailsafe 1y ago
Vancouver has a great coffee scene, better than most cities imo in terms of spread of types, prices, availability. A recent one I've been liking lately is Doe Roasters on Hastings, but Moja and JJBean are great too between $3-6 CAD for good filter coffee, presumably a bit more for espresso-based drinks.

keiferski 1y ago

Starbucks is pretty popular in Europe, even in places with better coffee. That’s because it’s better thought of as a combination between energy drinks and dessert, not a competitor to third-wave coffee shops or espresso bars. The vast, vast majority of their customers are not buying black coffee.

paxys 1y ago

In the US Starbucks is almost always the cheapest option in the area for decent coffee.

bombcar 1y ago
Upscale gas station coffee has improve tremendously in the last ten years
- PNWcossack 1y ago
  I agree, I went on a road trip recently and drank a lot of coffee on the road. a lot of it was from McDonalds, but I was pleasantly surprised how all the machines at the gas stations were freshly brewed coffee at the push of a button. I would have never conceived that gas stations would one day have consistently decent coffee 10 years ago.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    I think it's a combination of gas stations realizing that they need to "upscale and branch out" because eventually at some point cars won't be going to them as often, and major advancements (e.g., getting cheaper) for robotic machines that can make coffee. We're a long way from a five gallon jug of coffee that hasn't been cleaned out since 1982.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jayd16 1y ago

They have passable coffee but I think they actually did a good job of curating a good place to simply be. 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.

o_nate 1y ago
Two of the three Starbucks locations in my home town removed all of the seating. Across the street from one of them, an independent coffee shop opened up with lots of seating. Whenever I walk by the Starbucks is empty and there are a lot of people inside the independent shop. I have to wonder about their strategy.

jorisboris 1y ago

Its not for the coffee They are not hostile to laptops, and overall they have a well-thought out vibe with convenient seating and electricity plugs everywhere

tim333 1y ago
I used to hang out there a lot due to laptop friendliness and the like. There are so many competing places for that now though.
tetris11 1y ago
Exactly. People go to Starbucks for the WiFi and the juice

RyanOD 1y ago

It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency. 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.

rdtsc 1y ago
> It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency. 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.
projectazorian 1y ago
Yeah, I never go to Starbucks at home, but frequently do on the road. Much of this country is still a wasteland when it comes to good coffee and Starbucks reliably has adequate quality coffee and clean bathrooms.

rdtsc 1y ago

> I never understood Starbucks 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.

tetris11 1y ago
Off topic, but McDonalds actually serves better and cheaper coffee..
- PNWcossack 1y ago
  I agree, the last road trip I went on, where I clocked around 1700 miles, I actuality prefer going to a McDonald over SB to get a large coffee. Cheaper and tastes less burnt for a drip.

heymijo 1y ago

Our car culture in the U.S. means drive thrus can capture a significant portion of sales. Starbucks/Dunkin/McDonald’s do that. It’s very rare to find a local coffee shop in the U.S. with a drive-thru.

wk_end 1y ago
Depends on where you are in the US. Here in the PNW it’s common - including ones where, oddly, the baristas are all young women in bikinis.
- PNWcossack 1y ago
  "The baristas are all young women in bikinis"? what coffees shops are you going to in the PNW?
  - wk_end 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista

Yeul 1y ago

Starbucks was a novelty in the Netherlands of the mid 90s but Dutch people are masters in assimilating and adapting foreign ideas and there are several competing chains now.

cedws 1y ago

I went to Starbucks a lot in Japan because they have a lot of nice non-coffee drinks and have fast + reliable WiFi. A lot of young people go there to work and study too so I didn’t feel out of place.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

It's not about the coffee because it's a lifestyle brand that sells pseudo-prestige to the pseudo-affluent. It's overpriced and a marginal product.

abcd_f 1y ago

Starbucks Reserves are quite impressive though. 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. [1] https://www.roastery.starbucks.it/ https://www.roastery.starbucks.it/

DarkNova6 1y ago
Never knew that was a thing, looks nice!

verzali 1y ago

The coffee is bad but they don't complain if I sit there and work for six hours. I usually see the price as paying for that, not the coffee. Though I do prefer good local coffee shops when I find them, but I feel bad about taking up a table for hours without paying much.