Cap CEO pay to 5x that of the lowest employee. This guy making 400 million / year while his employees struggle is demonic.
Is there anyone here that can talk about when SB first started getting big? I can only assume that when it was first opened as a single store they didn’t intentionally burn the absolute shit out of their beans, but how about when it first started franchising? Was the coffee always garbage right from the beginning or did that come later?
Drinking Starbucks is masochism and Howard Schultz is a piece of shit
Man, it’s almost like pushing everyone into poverty in the pursuit of infinite growth had some long-term consequences.
I used to be a loyal customer but now I wouldn’t miss it if they closed all of them.
Probably about the union stores.
I don’t understand the appeal of Starbucks. Their products are prohibitively expensive and aren’t even very good. It’s like the McDonald’s of coffee.
Even McCafe is better than Starbucks.
Someone likes sugar …
Forgive me … for I am an engineer and we tend to be obnoxiously objective … but coffee is coffee … I tend to just make my own, and on a pinch. I prefer gas station’s for the convenience
I drink my coffee black, but I can’t do dark roasts. Messes with my gut. Starbucks always messes with my gut. But the medium roast whole bean I grind for the percolator every mornin? I can drink that all day, no problem. Gas station coffee tends to be pretty good. But hotel coffee often tastes like sawdust.
Starbucks has WAY more caffeine than most takeout coffee.
It messes with your gut probably because you’re getting 200-300 mg of caffeine when you’re expecting 100-150
Nah, I’m used to a lot of caffeine, it’s really dark roasts. The longer roasting process creates compounds that aren’t significantly present in lighter roasts. Also, they roast for longer to hide the flavor of poor or old beans.
A big part of it is that they’ll let you have any weird combination you want. They’ve got a ton of syrups, different milks, cream, sweet creams, different roasts, different shots, a bunch of stuff and you can get it any which way. If you go to almost any other mainstream coffee place you won’t have nearly as many options and you probably can’t combine them in any way imaginable. I have a few friends who work at Starbucks and they’ve shown me some crazy complicated drink orders they’ve had to do before.
Now I don’t think those crazy combinations taste any good, I’ve tried some before that friends have liked or that my barista friends have given me as a taste, but if you’re someone who likes sweet drinks I could see the appeal. For what it’s worth, a vast majority of their consumer base (at least that I’ve seen and heard) are the exact stereotype.
Socially acceptable/normalized morning milkshake addiction.
Thats the appeal of Starbucks.
They sell coffee flavored milkshakes.
And both sugar and caffeine are addictive.
More like the Dairy Queen of coffee. Basically desserts with a little coffee flavoring. Order a simple espresso and they break down in tears.
Luckin will eat out their soft underbelly in 6 months.
Yep.
Try ordering a dirty chai, you’ll probably just get a coffee and a chai latte poured together.
The appeal is that it’s like the McDonald’s of coffee. Consistent, familiar, available, affordabl ish ( I know their prices aren’t good but most high end local places will charge a lot too). If you don’t understand McDonald’s then what about pop music? All appealing to the middle of the bell curve. If you are reading Lemmy instead of reddit, its less likely that you tend to favor the middle of the bell curve on other things as well.
Exactly. Crap for the masses. Worked for McDonalds.
Taste is subjective. Personally, I decided to stop getting Starbucks along with as many other US companies as I can manage, but before that I enjoyed them, so did my partner.
In my city, we have hundreds of coffee shops. Which is good.
But they’re all priced like Starbucks. Which is bad.
-
Is not being able to afford coffee a good indicator of a looming recession?
-
Closing unionized stores, eh? I’m sure that’s a total coincidence.
-
Billionaires are your enemy.
For #1 it’s not coffee, it’s fancy coffee. You can get a basic cup of coffee at Dunkin’ donuts or McDonald’s or whatnot for a buck or two. Starbucks you end up with the venti half caff oat milk pumpkin spice latte with three pumps extra foam no drizzle or some similar thing that takes 10+ words to order, and it ends up being $7-$8ish. Add a pastry or sandwich and you’re at $10-$15.
When the belt gets squeezed, that goes away in favor of the $2 Dunkin coffee and 99c donut.Re 1, probably, but Starbucks isn’t just “coffee”, it’s like a luxury brand of coffee, lol.
When people can’t afford even the basic stuff, then I’d consider it an indicator.
-
Yeah economies fine everyone because you know how quickly americans skip coffee due to financial concerns.
A new Golden age for America!
Starbucks chars their beans because it masks the harsh flavor of the low quality beans. The other benefit for the mega corporation is that all burnt coffee tastes pretty much the same, meaning coffee origin and crop variations aren’t important and every mediocre cup of Starbucks coffee taste the same. Whoever convinced the public that ‘burnt’ equaled ‘high quality’ was a marketing genius, but maybe the public’s waking up to the scam.
Espresso made using even using a moderately priced home espresso machine and high quality beans is far superior to anything Starbucks puts out IMO. The machine can pay for itself in well under a year too.
Links to cheap machines under 300$? Anything i shouldnt skimp out on?
Costco and Amazon usually have some sub $300 machines around Black Friday including super automatics that do everything for you including grind the beans. I’ve used both supers and manual machines and prefer the convenience of the super automatic even though manual machines produce better coffee, IMO even with moderately priced Costco beans it’s world’s better than what Starbucks puts out.
This is absolutely the case. We love coffee here. For my partner especially, Starbucks used to be a daily habit. So I got a fancy expensive espresso machine, cost like $1,000. It has paid for itself many times over. Coffee is actually better IMHO- I like straight espresso and when the coffee isn’t burnt you get a much more complex flavor. Fresher too- we get our beans from a local roaster, so the first cup out of the bag is made with beans roasted days ago not months ago.
Stop going there, they don’t treat employees right.
A lot of people have, hence the closures.
Overpriced, absurd wait lines and anti-union all for a subpar product so full of sugar it could kill a diabetic. No thanks I can find better coffee at a gas station
They did some odd stuff around here. Went too heavily into some markets to kill out the small coffee chains. Then they closed the stores that were too close together to actually be profitable. Which then left a hole in the market, which much smaller (physically & staffwise) coffee shops then sprang up to fill.
Unfortunately they went franchise pretty fast - there are developers who look for small shops like this they can quickly replicate and then sell, making the owner rich, and the rest of us suckers. It’s why chains pop up, quiet chains, so fast these days.
Expensive, mediocre coffee and snacks. Starbucks used to be fairly premium. Good pastries with a big selection, good coffee menu that was almost all coffee and not all sugary junk. There were couches, nice bar seats, books, magazines, newspapers… The coffee wasn’t a whole lot better, but it was better.
Now it’s cheap, light hard seats and a couple thin tables if you’re lucky. Some places only have bar style seats if even that much. They want you to get your coffee and leave. The menu is as more sugar laden confections than coffee. Good pastries are all gone, now it’s out of a plastic bag into the paper one you receive it in.
No wonder it’s failing.
I swear I’m not a coffee snob. I have tried tons of different places and brands, both in store and at home. I have only had 2 or 3 brands/stores that are worse than Starbucks. I just can’t get past the burnt overroasted flavor they seem love there.
I will say the roastery in Seattle did have a good microbatch specialty drink there, but even then, I’ve had way better.
Years ago my only exposure to coffee was through Dunkin and Starbucks. In 2021 I splurged on a breville bambino plus and grinder to try making my own because regularly purchasing from either was too costly.
I don’t consider myself a coffee snob either (the shots I pull probably taste like shit to anyone who knows better) but I’ve learned to make a latte that tastes good to me! Since then I’ve been given Starbucks gift cards around the holidays, and damn - they’re almost painful to use but have their place in an emergency. It’s totally the thought that counts.
Dunkin can do now wrong! How dare you put them in the same sentence as Starbucks! /s
Grew up on the east coast. Drank lots of Dunkin.
My go-to is a nice light roast. You get a better coffee flavor and a higher caffeine content.
Meanwhile I can’t go anywhere else because it’s not roasted enough. Burn it and dump it down my throat!!!
