50504 Fri May 31 23:04:50 -0700 2002 32 2 Los Angeles Area 0 255545 When is the public's infatuation with Starbucks going to wear off? It's just a cup of coffee for Pete's sake. Why do people continue to pay Rodeo Drive prices for a lousy cup of coffee? Oh, I know, it is DESIGNER coffee. What exactly is the mark-up on the coffee at Starbucks? I got a funny feeling that a cup costs them about two cents. How else could they justify their total over saturation. In Chino Hills there is a Starbucks in the new Vons store, maybe a mile away is a Starbucks in the Albertson's store, RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET is a free-standing Starbucks. They gotta be making a HUGE profit on their lousy cup of coffee to be able to financially justify this oversaturation. And can Pasadena or South Pasadena 'hounds clarify something for me? Were my eyes deceiving me as I drove south on Fairoaks Wedenesday, did I really pass a free-standing bank building housing a local branch of Wells Fargo Bank AND STARBUCKS for crying out loud?!?! To top it all off, where I work the company contracts with Aramark for cafeteria services. The company has installed big automatic commercial coffee urns in strategic areas, and the company pays Aramark to keep them supplied with coffee, etc. So coffee anywhere is free, EXCEPT Aramark removed the automatic commercial FREE coffee urns from inside the cafeteria, and replaced them with those stupid thermos-pump devices, filled with lousy Starbucks designer coffee, and then charge us poor working stiffs Starbucks prices for a cup of coffee that used to be free. (Knowledgeable mature veteran saff [old geezers] like myself, know better than to get the coffee out of the dispersed urns that the company pays for, because all those young whippersnapper-worker bees brew the coffee, and they think the manufacturer recommended three pouches of coffee is "too strong", so they always brew sissy one pouch urns. So where the cafeteria urns were once the salvation of true coffee lovers, the cafeteria coffee boutique is now the thorn in the side of real coffee drinkers.) 'hounds, join me in fomenting the revolt against Starbucks, we can lead the charge in the Coffee Riots of 2002! Fri May 31 23:04:50 -0700 2002 0 Chino Wayne 1 255547 You're really gonna love this article then... Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/01/business/01CAFE.html Fri May 31 23:26:55 -0700 2002 255545 0 wow i'm a dog 2 255549 Oh I loved the part of the article where they said it would be a mistake to serve Viennese style pastries. Yeah right. So instead of maybe serving something decent, they will revert to the same crap they serve in the U.S. I can still remember the time I visited Starbucks at Hastings Ranch in Pasadena with the Mrs. We ordered a couple of cups of coffee, and the chocolate biscotti they had in ths big crystal like jar looked really good. So I bought one, at their exorbitant price. Then they fish it out of the glass jar, and it is this miniscule, cheap looking little piece of hard crud. The privateers who run Starbucks pulled a classic bait and switch on me. The glass jar was like a magnifying glass, making their customers think the biscotti were about three times as large as they actually were. So I guess Starbucks is going to export that wonderful example of American marketing honesty to the Austrians too. Fri May 31 23:42:46 -0700 2002 255547 0 Chino Wayne 3 255557 I've worked in offices where the middle-managment and up types considered themselves too important to make coffee, and the secretarial staff (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) felt that making coffee was setting The Movement back several years. So we kept running out, or about half a cup of stale coffee would remain burning in the pot. My solution: I made the coffee myself. It was easy to do, took only a couple of minutes, was fresh out of the pot for me, and everybody would have to drink whatever strength I favored. Plus, I got to feel very superior. (The others, of course, probably felt smug in that I was making their coffee for them. The perfect deal: everybody wins!) Sat Jun 01 01:57:48 -0700 2002 255549 0 TE 4 255566 Yeah I used to make the coffee myself too, but I don't get up that early in the morning anymore. These are really big, industrial size brewing machines in the office. The funny thing is that they have been automated too well. All you do is put a filter and a few pouches of coffee in the canister, then press one of two buttons to start the brew process. That automatically starts the water to flow in to the device (is is directly connected to the plumbing) and it brews a huge internal urn of coffee. Then all you have to do when it is ready is put your cup under the spigot and fill it up. The really funny part, is when some ignorant soul means to press the warm button to turn the urn heater on or off and they press the brew button, and there is already an internal urn full of coffee, then one more complete urn of water is added, which results in water overflowing and spilling out on the the counter and the floor. Building maintenance had to install custom stainless reservors that these machines now sit in, with a drainage connection to the adjacent sink drain. So by the time I get in to the office, the urns are alread full of weak coffee. Sat Jun 01 11:05:46 -0700 2002 255557 0 Chino Wayne 4 255668 Forgive me if this is a duplicate, but that's a great idea - making the coffee yourself. Where exactly are you in the office hierarchy? I don't get why people refuse to make coffee. I am, at age 50, a coffee "virgin". I've never consumed a cup (or a spoonful) and avoid anything containing even a smidgen of the stuff. I love that fresh ground smell, but hate the burning odor when it's been around a while. But I am the first one in the office every day and I gladly make the coffee just so everybody can get "fueled up" upon arrival. Mon Jun 03 17:16:56 -0700 2002 255557 0 Christine Vallejo 1 255553 I saw the funniest bumper sticker the other day... "Friends don't let friends drink STARBUCKS!" I actually won a $100.00 gift certificate to STARF*#%$ as I call it, and spent the entire thing on gifts, CD's. and other trinkets in that GOD awful place...anything is better than the horrible, burnt, gas inducing crud they serve there! Sat Jun 01 00:50:53 -0700 2002 255545 0 johanna 1 255558 At the office, I have an 8-cup French press and a grinder,daily taking matters into my own hands with fresh beans . I share the pot with a co-worker, and we still make out like bandits compared to the prices our coworkers shell out for either a) the coffeehouse fare across the street (albeit a mom-and-pop, not a Starbucks), or b) a cup of the insipid Farmer Brothers or Apffel's swill from the Coffee Club pot. I cop to having bought whole bean coffee at the 800-lb. gorilla a few times in the past (in addition to Diedrich's and Coffee Bean), but since I found Polly's on 2nd St. in Belmont Shore, they've become my sole purveyor of freshly roasted beans. Link: http://www.pollys.com Sat Jun 01 03:06:39 -0700 2002 255545 0 Kriss Reed 2 255559 I've taken to ordering from Caffe Cardinale, a small shop in Carmel. Rocco roasts small batches daily, so it's always fresh. When it comes, the UPS delivery guy always remarks about how good the coffee smells. One of us makes a fresh pot every day, and we keep it a thermal carafe, to maintain flavor without burning. The Carmel Sunrise roast is my favorite. Of the chains, however, I think Peet's has the best product, and Starbucks the poorest. Link: http://www.carmelcoffee.com Sat Jun 01 03:13:28 -0700 2002 255558 0 LBQT 3 255562 I worked at Starbuck's for several years, starting with them when there were just five stores. Coffee is NEVER just a cup of coffee. I spent many years blind tasting on a weekly basis. I knew right away if what I was drinking was from Kenya, Kona, Sumatra, Columbia, what was in the blend...if you understand and appreciate wine and all the wonderful varietals, how they taste from region to region, what the vinter means to the wine you're halfway there to understanding coffee. As with wine, consumers like what they like no matter how expensive or not, dark roasted, lightly roasted, etc., and of course roast greatly affects taste, the end product, the same as aging a wine and what kind of container it ages in will affect the end result. I liken the depth of the roast as similar to some people preferring white wine over cabernet sauvignon. Some people like a cinnamon roast (which I find insulting to a high quality of bean, but this is me) and others like the city roasts and beyond. I like my coffee darkly roasted as it brings out more of the natural oils from the bean giving it more depth and flavor. I believe it's the way coffee should be roasted, but as I said people like what they like. Starbuck's does heavily mark up the cost of their coffees. I know it's hard to believe, but it's the honest truth. I left Starbuck's when they moved into opening 75 or more stores a year. It was disappointing to see them leave behind their purist beginnings (the idea of hazelnut, vanilla anything horrified some of the original corporate staff) and become "the Nordstrom's of coffee". I fairly certain a lot more of their money is coming from the CD's, pastry (which has sadly always left a great deal to desire), and other store products. I'm not going to tell you that they make nothing on drinks that are beyond the regular ol' cup-o-joe (latte, mocha), but everything that goes into that cup isn't cheap, including the person who is paid to make it for you. While my heart is with Starbuck's and I feel Howard Schultz is a masterful businessman (I used to speak with Howard every day, a wonderful employer), I miss the good old days when it was just coffee, a couple of pastries, some nice cups, coffee presses and an espresso machine or two for sale. I seek out coffee everywhere I go, checking out the different roasters, and even the baristas (which is hugely important to how good your cup of coffee is-believe it) I personally have yet to find many of the smaller roasters making a product I've been excited about. Peet's remains my favorite as I feel they really understand what it's all about and really bring out those varietal characteristics that make the difference between a good and a great cup of coffee. Incidentally, the roaster's at Peet's taught the original owners of Starbuck's how to roast coffee in the early 70's (71?). I am going on memory here, which gets shakier every year, but there was a deal that Starbuck's would not open any stores in the Northern California area (possibly all of CA-not sure) for 20 years after this. I was surprised when I moved here to see that Peet's has just a couple of stores, but I am thrilled there is one down the street from my home. Sat Jun 01 05:16:14 -0700 2002 255559 0 Sirius 4 255567 Oh, I can appreciate what you are saying in terms of the complexities of coffee. But I still refuse to pay those Starbucks prices, unless I am just too desperate for a cup. I am perfectly happy with a homebrewed cup of Folgers. And for you coffee experts, remember, this is Chino Wayne talking, they simple guy who is also has a complete "celler" at home of Sutter Home wine. I still say Starbucks has over saturated, and have become the McDonalds of coffee. Sat Jun 01 11:10:36 -0700 2002 255562 0 Chino Wayne 3 255580 Peet's is definitely tops on my list of fresh java vendors. As for beans, I order from Cornwell Estates in Kona. The smoothest, richest coffee, grown organically and roasted, shipped in vaccuum seal bags. I keep beans in the freezer and about a week's worth of grounds in the fridg. Good to the last drop! Sat Jun 01 15:16:05 -0700 2002 255559 0 Sarah 1 255563 Sounds like you got up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday! Sat Jun 01 09:07:04 -0700 2002 255545 0 stray gator 1 255571 You may have some interest in this brief rant I wrote about Starbucks back in the age of innocence of early September (though I'll admit that the NY Times article about Starbucks in Vienna provided distressing counterevidence to my final sentence -- a phenomenon somehow even more distressing than McDonald's in Paris): The executives at Starbucks are said to love Ray Oldenberg's book "The Great Good Place". Subtitled "Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day", Oldenberg's book is about mundane "third places" where communities get built, or as we say today, where social capital gets formed. Third places are reputedly in decline as people get lost in their jobs and televisions, and the Starbucks people claim to be mending this tear in the social fabric. It's bunk. If you listen closely, the Starbucks people will admit that they don't want or expect anyone to be spending more than ten minutes in a Starbucks shop. Starbucks is basically about real estate, and about calculating the maximum number of dollars that can be extracted from a quantum of space-time. It is the AOL of the physical world. Starbucks is a retail experience concept, as they say in business, and they decorate every corner of it with encouragements to spend money. No cute signs from the shop staff like they have in real cafes; no paintings from neighborhood artists on the walls. Little tiny tables incapable of holding a newspaper. The cashiers who translate your order into the precision combinatorics of Starbucks coffee lingo and shout it to the coffee-makers loud enough for you to overhear -- their express intention is to teach you the correct way to say it. Yuck. At Starbucks it's not about community. It's about Starbucks. Then there's the coffee. I gave up coffee a while ago, and caffeine a while before that. But I always felt sorry for the people who believed Starbucks propaganda about their brainiac coffee-processing. Nobody who has had actual French, Italian, or Turkish coffee, bracing bitterness cut with precise amounts of sugar, could possibly be interested in the bland, flat taste that Starbucks somehow imposes on coffee beans from every corner of the world. Sat Jun 01 11:53:28 -0700 2002 255545 0 Phil Agre 2 255598 I'm with you. Starbucks has evolved in to being simply the product of market hype. I will grant as other posters have stated, that there is a lot more to coffee than what you see in the cup. But come on, a corporate behemouth can train any high school graduate how to brew and serve coffee, and even indoctrinate him/her in to the subtleties and differences and the lingo. But doesn't it all boil down to taking an order and filling it with a cup of coffee. I can appreciate that beans from different "appelations" and from different roasters together with the method of preparation, will have different qualities and subtleties of taste. But regardless of what coffee I order, in terms of both the source of the beans and the method of preparation, it is JUST A CUP OF COFFEE that I will either enjoy or not enjoy. And as far as Starbucks service people, note I said service people, NOT "barristas" go, all I want out of them is to politely take my order and fill it correctly and promptly (that is if I ever go back in to a Starbucks). This whole barrista mystique, and the lingo is horseshit. I wonder what the entymology of the word "barrista" is? It really is a Starbucks marketer's dream word, conjuring up "barrister" and then conjouring up coffee supplicants seeking the wise and worldly counsel of their barrista, yeah right. Again, it is just a cup of coffee, and the value of a cup of coffee at Starbucks is what the public is willing to pay for it. So you can count me out as willing to pay for a cup of Starbucks coffee. Sun Jun 02 12:52:02 -0700 2002 255571 0 chino wayne 3 255773 Barista is an Italian word for the person that mans the espresso machine. A good barista is no B.S. Ever had a horrible cup of espresso? It was definitely the barista's fault for not checking the grind, not knowing how to adjust it (according to weather, humidity), how hard or soft to tamp the grounds based on where the grind is at, how long to "pull" the espresso for the perfect crema and smooth, not bitter or burnt taste. A good barista has a lot to do with a good espresso. Wed Jun 05 16:18:08 -0700 2002 255598 0 Ren 4 255806 Oh, but the implication, at least on the Starbucks radio commercials I hear, is that a barrista is a whole lot more than just a skilled coffee chef. ;-) Wed Jun 05 20:33:38 -0700 2002 255773 0 chino wayne 2 255669 I actually heard a Starbuck's manager in Minneapolis spouting off the "third place" philosophy. Good grief! Mon Jun 03 18:24:58 -0700 2002 255571 0 dgrimes 1 255578 I don't get it either - I don't even think Starbucks tastes all that good - I find an odd off taste in all their drinks - much prefer Diedrich's anyway. I gave up on that $4 a day expense a long time ago, but my next door neighbors still crawl out of bed every morning & fight over who has to make the Starbucks run - wierd. Sat Jun 01 15:08:26 -0700 2002 255545 0 torta basilica 1 255607 I once took a twenty-minute walk around my old office in San Francisco, which is at the corner of Fremont and Market. In that 20 minutes I counted 24 Starbucks, which is not to mention Tully's, Peet's, Seattle's Best, Diedrichs, and independent coffee houses. There is a corner in Costa Mesa that has Starbucks on three of its four points. In Huntington Beach, in the new centre at Yorktown and Goldenwest, there is a Starbucks in the Albertsons and another just behind the Albertsons. Now, don't get me wrong, I used to work for the Evil Empire, and I really really like their chai lattes, but it is NOT the be-all and end-all of coffee. Sun Jun 02 17:34:58 -0700 2002 255545 0 PRSMDave 2 255675 I was going to comment on the ubiquity of Starbucks in the same neighborhood as well, Dave. Starbucks was opening its own stores, and then it bought a local chain (Pasqua) and kept all their locations, even when they were in the same block. So for example, on the block bounded by Fremont, Market, Mission and Beale, there are three Starbucks; one of those faces another one on the opposite side of Market St. It is literally impossible to walk the three blocks from the Transbay Terminal at Mission and Fremont to my office at California and Davis without passing at least two Starbucks (since there's one in the ground floor of my building there's no way to do it without passing one). To say nothing of the Tully's across the street. Mon Jun 03 19:10:26 -0700 2002 255607 0 Ruth Lafler 3 255687 Last Month's Harper's Index stated that 60-something percent of the Starbucks stores in Manhattan are within two blocks of another one, and from my own experience it is utterly believable. Mon Jun 03 20:41:18 -0700 2002 255675 0 Caitlin McGrath 4 255692 That's the thing that bugs me about Starbucks. There are too many of them where you don't want them and none in site when you do want them. They never seem to open in towns where there isn't one decent coffee shop. They opened one up in San Francisco right next to a coffee shop that was a neighborhood mainstay for years. They were sneaky about it. Suddenly without warning, almost overnight, there they were. That is not an easy thing to do in this city either. I don't appreciate them trying to run small businesses out of the neighborhood. In their favor, they do use free trade coffee. I do hope they don't make big inroads into Europe. Mon Jun 03 21:23:59 -0700 2002 255687 0 Stanley Stephan 5 255775 When I worked for Starbucks in the late 80's there were just a few stores in Seattle. Every store downtown was swamped with business. Even then they were just a block apart. With so many large buildings in the downtown area there were plenty of customers per store. We then opened three (?) stores in Chicago and as many in Vancouver, B.C. and Portland, OR. Things were going well at each of the new locations with the exception of Chicago (I believed we closed one of the stores). Then in 1990, I was a meeting where we were told the plan was to open 75 new stores in the next year. I knew Starbuck's would never be the same. On the one hand, I understood that they wanted to make money, expose the nation to a better cup of coffee than the standard Folger's, follow their momentum and see where they could go. Everyone wouldn't mind being wealthy, having a successful, powerful business, right? But, on the other hand, many of us were upset. We objected to the fact that we would lose control over the quality of employees, the quality of service, the quality of the coffee and become just another massive American food chain (McDonald's, Burger King). And we did. I remember in that same meeting one of the managers told me and another one of the trainers that it "was Howard's dream to have a Starbuck's on every corner". Knowing Howard as I did, I believed it would be so. My heart dropped. Soon after I left the company and watched as Starbucks did indeed open on just about every corner. Wed Jun 05 16:35:44 -0700 2002 255692 0 Sirius 5 255822 They shan't. The café culture is too deeply ingrained into most of Europe. Most countries already have espresso or similar concoctions, so it's not the "gourmet coffee" business that swept the US in the 80's and 90's. Besides, Starbucks managers get pissed when you linger for three and four hours over your coffee and pastry. Thu Jun 06 01:18:26 -0700 2002 255692 0 PRSMDave 1 255634 Funny how a guy can wax poetic about something as common as,for example, a sandwich, but when it come to coffee, its "all just a cup of coffee"? Mon Jun 03 07:54:52 -0700 2002 255545 0 Hoosier Daddy 2 255774 My thought exactly... Wed Jun 05 16:19:28 -0700 2002 255634 0 Ren 1 255654 I don't like Starbucks coffee and I don't like Starbucks prices. However, I do love what Starbucks has done for coffee in America. The mere fact that coffee is a discussion item, the fact that a coffee house is even a blip on someone's radar outside of Seattle and San Fran is, in some large part, a credit to Starbucks. They have single handedly created a market for strong, contemplation worthy coffee in the bulk of the U.S. On the other hand, I am slightly disturbed by their intrusion into Europe... (Side note: I do LOVE Starbucks egg nog latte's and they do them better than anyone else.) Mon Jun 03 13:06:26 -0700 2002 255545 0 Jeff Pillet-Shore 2 256095 I was just looking at pictures from my parents' recent trip to China -- there's a Starbucks in the Forbidden City. Talk about ubiquity! Tue Jun 11 17:29:37 -0700 2002 255654 0 Ruth Lafler 1 255659 I have been boycotting Starbuck's ever since the store in lower Manhattan charged a rescue worker $220 (something like that) for water he needed for for the victims of 9/11. The WTC was in in complete devastation, the area was a true disaster, and the store could not find it feasible to give away some water. I was so disgusted. The corporation apologized a few days later when the story was covered by the press, and refunded the worker's money, but I am so disgusted by anything to do with Starbucks. And no, this is not an Internet rumor - it's a true story.. Mon Jun 03 14:27:40 -0700 2002 255545 0 EatDrinkMan 2 255663 Yes it is a true story, but the problem was caused by one idiot in the store, not the company. Mon Jun 03 14:41:09 -0700 2002 255659 0 Ray 3 255689 Yes, but the owner of Star*ucks was very snippy to the people who complained. Mon Jun 03 20:45:39 -0700 2002 255663 0 Bruce 1 255791 Speaking of one on every corner, maybe we should go the other way. Instead of boycotting, rent Starbucks a corner of our dining areas. Then, we'd have one in every home--ubiquity and propinquity! Just like cable TV. Hard to remember that we once had free TV. Wed Jun 05 18:40:18 -0700 2002 255545 0 mc michael