Again!

Their coffee is harsh and bitter, but their tea is pretty good. And much cheaper. A cup of tea hovers around a buck and a half, if memory serves. You can have the atmosphere, the eclectic music, you can roam through the abandoned morning papers that other people bought,you can wear the mask of the urban leisure class, pounding away at your laptop as if it wasn't 10 am... all for a buck fifty or so.

And raw sugar and real half-and-half make for a delicious cuppa tea.

The Starbucks coffee cake, warm and with a covering of caramel, is deeelish.

Joanie

Liberals hate Starbucks because it's A Big Corporation. Yano ... The MAN. Conservatives hate Starbucks because it's so (curl lip into sneer) hip. Projection, projection! Starbucks is just a company that took and idea, did it better than anyone else, and ::gasp!:: was successful. Hooray for them, sez I. And hooray for me when they have that dulce de leche drink on the menu. How do they get that whipped cream to be so rich? Inject lard? More lard, please! I love that stuff.

...Hellman's is to Miracle Whip.
If you love one, you hate the other.
I for one like Starbuck's and am not the least bit offended to hear it denigrated by those taste buds swing another way.
It's what makes the world go 'round. er.... the debate, not the coffee, well....both.

Biscotto.

way back in '93 I was living in Seattle and Starbucks was the anti-Big Corporation. It seems whenever a company is successful, the left turns on it. I don't mind Starbucks coffee, but I sure as heck do not want to be hip at 8:45 am. I want to be caffeinated. Just give me a good honest cup o' joe. Not a double half-mocha triple espresso grande with a lemon twist and cinnamon.

Bingo. They are not even in the coffee business. They are in the milk business.

Just got back from a regional barista competition and witnessed 27 people who were thoroughly engrossed in their passion - which happens to be making fanstatic espresso drinks.

And that was just one of 10 regional barista competitions taking place this past year.

There's a whole lot that goes on in the process from seed to cup. The passionate folks are passionate not only about serving you a great cup, but also in sourcing product from farms that have proven themselves to be adopting sustainable models. On a macro level, it's not a whole lot different than dealing with grapes for wine production or for that matter any really good produce that is noticeably better when one considers the input that terroir, processing, shipping and storage have in affecting the final product.

Lots of folks today care more about where their work fits in with the global neighborhood than simply grabbing for the quickest, foulest dollar.

(btw, the UNITED STATES barista competition is in your town this May. Hope you get another assignment far, far away.)

I have a passion for making better metal stampings. Out heat treating oven went down today, and I had to troubleshoot the temperature controller. I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee in the last 24h, and it cost me about $0.15, including the amortized cost of the coffee maker. It seems to me that those most concerned with "fair trade" often haven't worked a day in their life. Get your hands dirty!

See, even coffee can be made political.

Okay, baristas, does anyone know why we play free-form noodly jazz at 8:45 AM, even though the entire genre of music makes people think of smoky nightclubs were all the musicians wear sunglasses are refer to each other as “cats”? Right: because it makes people feel hip. We used to play happy shopping music at barely perceptible volume, but too many people asked if it was meant ironically.

As a jazz musician, I resemble that remark... ;-)

But if we'd been talking about live jazz (and yes, I've gigged at a Starbucks before), the only reason for anyone to play it at 8:45 a.m. would be if it were still going on from the night before...