Further thots on Starbucks

A reader writes,

Haven't read it all, but there is some great stuff on your blog. Of course, I don't agree with everything you say (but I'll defend to the..., well, maybe not, but still I'm glad you're saying it.).

Here's something you said that I disagree with: "But I just can’t dislike a company whose service and product is so darn good (well, at least, the drip coffee is good..."

I agree the folks at starbucks are cheerful, and helpful, but the drip coffee tastes bad. We can argue about tastes all day long, but I have an iron-clad logical proof of my assertion as well: (1) All coffee that is super bitter and acidic is bad (2) Starbucks coffee is super bitter and acidic (3) Therefore, Starbucks coffee is bad. So lets leave that aside. An idea occurred to me yesterday. The set-up was this: I was in the mall, and got a craving for a coffee. But I found that coffee stands were all closed. I asked the girls at the information booth what had happened. Turns out the coffee stands were closed in transition to Starbucks taking over all coffee vending in the mall. So I said, and this proves I am not just asserting that Starbucks coffee sucks to be contrarian, "Don't you think Starbucks coffee is bad?" Girl 1, "NO! I love the white chocolate mocha!" I,"No, but the drip coffee..." Girls 1&2 almost in unison, "Oh, yeah, I never drink the coffee." I think this is true of many Starbucks customers. I, for example, dislike their coffee but really like their hot chocolate. Starbucks started out as a coffee shop, but now it has caramel, whip cream, chocolate sauce and iced drinks. It occurred to me that Starbucks has evolved to fill the niche formerly occupied by soda shops. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_shop)

--Pat


That's a good point about the soda shop transition and niche-filling thing. Until now, I had been thinking of Starbucks in almost opposite terms, i.e., they specialize in drip coffee, which they do really well (IMHO-- obviously not everyone agrees, but more on that later) but they don't actually do the Italian specialty drinks very well. For example, if you order a cappuccino in Starbucks, the quality is variable, but generally poor. The foam is weak, the bubbles are big and fragile-- it looks like sea foam. (Deliberately nauseating simile.) If you order a cappuccino at Greco or Steps of Rome in North Beach, the foam is so thick you can prop up a spoon in it and the texture is like velvet. It makes me cry.

But, I don't fault Starbucks for that, because they performed a huge, huge service in just bringing decent ordinary drip coffee to small towns all across the US. Just because here in SF we're spoiled and can get Euro-quality fancy espresso drinks by snapping our fingers, big deal.

So, I don't order cappuccinos in Starbucks, just as I don't buy sushi at Safeway.

But now, as you've pointed out, they have added to their original business model with these sugary, cloying drinks targeted at folks (like your mall chicks) who don't really drink real coffee. Brilliant! I have no problem with that, either. If some people want to down 2,000 calories in a single Venti Gulp, fine with me. Our next door neighbor works at Starbucks HQ and has warned us that the primary ingredient in many of these fancy drinks is, in fact, sugar syrup.

They *still* don't do the traditional Italian specialty drinks well, but so what, I live in SF so if I want a cappuccino I can always go to Steps of Rome.

On the Starbucks coffee acidity/bitterness issue, I have had the same experience with Peet's Coffee as you have had with Starbucks. Peet's always tastes bitter and acidic to me. At least, it does when I get it at the Peet's storefront locations. This has been very consistent. I tried to like Peet's for several years, back in my "hate Starbucks" mode, but finally gave up, because I just couldn't drink Peet's. Contrariwise, I started out thinking Starbucks' coffee was too strong (not acidic, just too strong) but I gradually got used to it and now I *like* my coffee strong. I do put a lot of cream in it if it's hot, though. (I drink a lot of iced coffee, too, and it doesn't seem to need cream. Not sure why that should be, but temperature definitely affects the lingual flavor receptor strunods-- witness American cold beer vs English "cellar temp" beer.)

Now for the past 3 years I've been drinking the excellent coffee at my place of work, and I just realized a couple of months ago that it's Peet's! But the coffee at work never tastes acidic or bitter: it's great! I understand that acidic flavors may be due to using too fine a grind. I checked the grind at work one day when the cafeteria staff left one of the humongous urn filters out on the counter, and it looked perfect for regular drip coffee. No surprise there. So maybe the problem at the storefront Peet'ses is that they grind too fine? Seems weird, though. Why would they do that?

It also seems weird that your lingual flavor receptor strunods and mine would come up with such opposite results on Starbucks, but there you have it. No accounting for taste.

On another coffee-tasting note, I once purchased and brewed a quarter pound of Jamaica Blue Mountain, which I had read was the greatest coffee ever. It should be, at $40/lb. I was not impressed. It tasted weak. I've tried various coffees over the years, and I understand that the roasting is critical, the storage, the grind, etc. etc. etc., even which mountainside it grew on-- but I've found that Colombian is always the best.

PS, for anyone out there who likes Starbucks' coffee, supposedly it's available quite a bit cheaper at Costco branded as "Kirkland", their house brand. I'm using it now and it's good.