The New Starbucks Policy

[RedJoker]

Originally Posted by EdEd

You hate the coffee, the place, and the policies... sounds like complaining just to complain.

What’s next, “get off my lawn”?

Ed

For all that I like about the AGF, this is what I hate the most. There is more complaining here than any other forum I frequent. It's ok, I just simply take a break when it bothers me too much. Sometimes, I just order a nice grande coffee to calm me down.

[cotten]

Starbucks has been a popular college student hang out here locally. Too popular, if you ask them. Too many people come in and camp out, so there is rarely a place to sit. Instead, they are going to a couple of locally owned sandwich shops. More room, equally good WiFi, better food and drinks, including coffee, at a significantly lower price. True, they expect you to buy something, but according to my student friends, the local Starbucks is a victim of their own policies.

I have to rely on these friends for opinions on Starbucks, since the only time I go, maybe once a year, is to meet with someone who suggests it.

cotten

[ahorsewithnonam]

Originally Posted by Tico

+1

... actually the coffee at Fivebucks tastes like licking ash trays.

And I refuse to say those pretentious words.
I'll call the sizes small, medium, and large - thank you very much.
... and when I say medium I don't care to be corrected, subjugated, and trained.

But it’s so trendy!!!!!!!!!

[Chicago Sandy]

Peet's? Where do you think S'bux (*$$) got the idea to roast its beans to near-incineration? Back in the day when I lived in Seattle ("get off my lawn moment" alert...) before *$$ served coffee drinks it sold only beans, teas, chocolate, spices and low-tech brewing equipment--mostly drip & press. It offered a variety of different roasts & blends.

I forget whether it then bought Allegro or half the owners opened Cafe Allegro in Seattle's U. District (which was awesome and offered great espresso drinks & pastries) and the other half went to Peet's. Howard Schultz became marketing director and expanded sales to restaurants and mail-order sales. After a trip to Italy he founded Il Giornale, which offered free newspapers & magazines and comfy seating and sold espresso drinks (a la Italy's and U.S. indie espresso bars & coffeehouses) using Starbucks beans; by then the Peet's-style dark roast was the Seattle gold standard. Il Giornale bought Starbucks and rebranded itself as the latter, expanding outside the Seattle area, selling mostly espresso drinks & brewed coffee, with beans & tchotchkes as a sideline.

That's why the characteristic *$$ flavor profile tastes like sucking on burnt wooden matches. And it's what customers came to expect (many equating darker with stronger and therefore a badge of conoisseurship or even manliness--joke's on them because the darker the roast, the lower the caffeine, more of which burns off as the beans turn to carbon).

Schultz was forced out as CEO but remained Chairman; but when he saw the company had become synonymous with "Seattle burnt coffee," he returned as CEO; he heeded consumers and critics alike and brought out the chain's first medium roast intended for drip brewing, Pike Place. He was proud of it being freshly-roasted (with roast, not expiry, dates marked on the boxes) and even sold it hand-scooped in bulk to consumers. That didn't last, because consumers bought only what they needed and were loath to hang around the shop if they could DIY at home. Pike Place beans began being sold in vacuum-sealed packages, along with House Blend and various dark roasts. (They all bear expiry dates, as much as a year post-roast. Caveat emptor).

Over the years, more light-ishly roasted blends (Blonde, Veranda, etc.) and various single-origin varietals were offered. Brewed at home, per industry standard measurements, taste differences were apparent; but when consumers wanted a cup of drip in-store, they expected the "Starbucks flavor profile," which was basically nearly-charcoal. So whether the brew of the day in-shop is Pike Place, Veranda, Kenya, or anything other than super-dark, it's brewed ultra-strong to mimic the beloved burnt-match flavor.

When Schultz returned from exile, he also was dismayed at how the espresso drink process had become so automated that employees weren't baristas but button-pushers (who had no idea how to properly steam or froth milk). He ditched the all-in-one ultra-superautomatic grinder-brewer espresso machines, bought new ones with more manual controls, and actually closed down the chain for a week to train employees as baristas (minus the latte art and hipster beards).

I don't know if they still exist, but a few years back (2012, IIRC), there were a few branches in mostly university and tech-industry towns that offered the insanely expensive ($10K) "Clover" brewing system (Starbuck's bought out Clover, which machines then disappeared from other coffee shops) and varietals custom-roasted to bring out each bean's flavor profile and measured accordingly; though pricey ($5 for a grande, $6-7 for a venti depending on bean--sometimes even 100% Kona), the resulting coffee was extraordinary. I had tried Clover cups at Intelligentsia and Metropolis before Starbucks bought the system; and the Clover-brewed Kona I drank at a Starbucks in Johnson City, TN was exquisite.

There is a chain in Boston called Clover Food Lab--it sells delicious, sustainable and imaginative vegan breakfast & lunch items, natural drinks (for awhile, its own microbrews) and wonderful coffees curated by longtime Boston coffee guru George Howell. How are its coffees brewed? In a row of individual pour-over filter-cones. Everything old is new again.

[jpd]

Originally Posted by Scott O

So if Fonzie was still around, would he move his office from Al's to Starbucks? And if so, would it be in the dining area or in the bathroom?

If Fonzie was still around, there'd only be *Al's*

[Tico]

Originally Posted by Tico

+1

... actually the coffee at Fivebucks tastes like licking ash trays.

And I refuse to say those pretentious words.
I'll call the sizes small, medium, and large - thank you very much.
... and when I say medium I don't care to be corrected, subjugated, and trained.

Originally Posted by ahorsewithnonam

But it’s so trendy!!!!!!!!!

Ah yes, trendy.

Ash tray taste, obscene price, and trendy ... the third reason to boycott that pretentious dump ... unless you just need a free place to empty your bladder.

How ironically appropriate that Fivebucks is now America's toilet.

[Chicago Sandy]

And as to people using coffeehouses as their de facto offices, I recall there was one shop near the courthouse in the Clarendon area of Arlington, VA. (I forget the name and that of the owner, but it sold Counter Culture Coffee beans and the owner was renowned but definitely a strong personality). It was extremely popular with local college students--so popular, in fact, that often there was absolutely nowhere to sit (especially indoors on hot days). Kids (who ostensibly had gotten off of our lawns) would spread out, taking up entire tables and unoccupied chairs with their laptops, notebooks, backpacks and other paraphernalia. It was not a pleasant experience having to sit outdoors on the patio in 100F heat drinking our lattes while the students nursed one coffee for hours as they used the air-conditioned indoors as their own free study-carrels. I think that was one of the first cafés that eventually instituted a time-limited password-with-purchase policy for wi-fi.

It came to national attention one day because of the owner's refusal to sell espresso shots to go. It sounds at first idiosyncratic and curmudgeonly, but patrons were taking advantage by going over to the milk station and essentially making their own lattes for the price of a shot. He had tried selling to-go shots in tiny paper cups, but they were expensive to stock and patrons would just pour them into their own reusable cups. I don't know if patrons eventually tried to game him by pouring their "for here" shots from china cups into their own reusables. All I know is that a few years back he sold the business and it became a restaurant.

His (and his baristas') drinks were great, though--and as long as you weren't trying to get something for nothing or hog his seating, he was extremely gracious and genial (and would occasionally even comp a shot for CoffeeGeek members).

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by ahorsewithnonam

But it’s so trendy!!!!!!!!!

I have trouble categorizing something as pervasive and ubiquitous as McDonalds as "trendy".

Carping about Starbucks is core hipster activity. I guess there are a ton of hipsters on this site.

It's better than coffee was before it came about. Not my favorite by any means. Glad they upped the bar. They're the Taylor of coffee. Wildly successful and fun to hate upon.

[Dirk Hofman]

I'd love to see this thread resurface in about a year.

[Cabarone]

Originally Posted by Nymuso

When it comes to coffee, I'm a Dunkin Donuts man.

^^^^^^^^
This...I'd been talking up their coffee to my wife for years...finally, on the way home from Georgia we stopped at one and she got to try it...poor thing ordered a dark roast out of habit....just wasn't the same...she finally got the real deal a couple months ago when one finally opened up again here in town...

In the spirit of the OP, there used to be a Denny's close to the University of Dayton. Being open 24 hours, one of the evening mainstays of their business was students setting up in a booth, getting croutons and Ranch dressing, and spending hours doing homework...that and chess players getting coffee and playing until the bar/street crowd started milling in...

[Jobe]

I get my Dunkin' Donuts coffee at the drive-thru. As I don't want to spill it I find it convenient to attend the local Starbucks to enjoy my Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Is that wrong? I haven't read all the new policy rules.

[Kerbie]

Keep this thread polite or it will be removed.

[KevWind]

What's Starbucks ??? is that like Cosmic Dollars ? jusss kiddin'.

[Denny B]

The only contact I've had with Starbucks is that there is one located inside the local Super Kroger where I shop...it's like a large kiosk with a seating area around it...

I've been desperate enough for a cup of coffee while shopping that I've tried it a time a couple of times...both times I had to dump the cups of burned swill...nuff said there...

But the seating area does seem to stay full of people on computers, cell phones, or reading magazines for free from the stand across the aisle, and very few of them seem to have a Starbucks product in front of them...

But it's quiet, nobody is bothering anyone, the staff doesn't seem to mind, so I've never really given any thought to it till this thread came up...

I think it's another one of those "if you don't have a dog in the race" things, why would you care?

[Dirk Hofman]

I have to say it is interesting to see people...not sure if rooting for this to fail is the right phrase, but certainly there does seem to be some anticipatory schadenfreude around this. Almost as if such a failure would confirm some deeply held beliefs.

Letting people use bathrooms and sit in Starbucks without buying anything is a effort to put right a situation which seemed quite wrong to most people. Do people think the situation was OK? That they did the right thing in Philly? Is that the objection, that Starbucks is trying to right something that was never wrong? I wonder if anyone wants to get behind that idea?

People have said the rule is stupid, and will ruin Starbucks' business. OK, let's look at that. Starbucks has also said, and curiously not mentioned here, that they will continue to remove people for behavior like sleeping, disruptions, noise, etc. Did people not hear that part of the rule? Not think there would be leeway in applying the rule? Do we just assume the management is self-destructive?

Seemed and still seems pretty obvious that driving out good, paying customers isn't wise, and seems pretty obvious that they would retain the right to control their spaces. The propensity to assume stupidity on the part of Starbucks management seems odd, and fueled by something. Can't quite put my finger on what, but I don't like the feel of it.