Starbucks really gets a bad rap. Some people like to complain about how expensive the coffee is... they rant about spending $4 on a cup of coffee. Other people poo-poo it because it's "so corporate" and not indie and so on.
But the reality is that Starbucks represents a complete shift in the coffee palate of America and much of the world. A shift away from mega-corporate bad coffee. The vast majority of coffee served in "cheap" coffee places (diners, convenience stores, fast food, and most people's homes) is grown at incredible low cost and is extremely exploitive of the workforce that produces it. It's also highly caffeinated and lacking in flavor, and not by accident... produced from robusta beans instead of the less-caffeinated, more flavorful arabicas. So to complain about how "corporate" Starbucks is, is a joke in most contexts.
Second, a cup of coffee isn't $4 at Starbucks. A basic cup of regular coffee is just over $1. Not $4. Some espresso drinks, in the larger sizes, cost around $4. If you want to complain about prices, complain about Frappuccinos, which aren't made with a significant amount of coffee and still cost in the range of the large espresso drinks.
Third, I frequent quite a number of "indie" coffee shops... and they're no better. The prices are about the same. Worse, they usually can't make good espresso. Starbucks produces consistent quality, you know what you can expect. It isn't brilliant, but it's good, and it's almost always good, at every Starbucks. Starbucks baristas are trained... not thoroughly, but sufficiently. Indie shops are all over the place in quality, mostly worse.
It's not that Starbucks is perfect, far from it. They sell "black apron" coffees for insane prices, but really don't pay much more for them (or at least that has occurred in the past, whether it's true of all of those beans, I don't know). They aren't the force they could be to change the coffee industry to improve the lives of farmers. And so on. But it is really unfortunate that they get disparaged by coffee snobs and coffee neanderthals alike. They don't really deserve it.
Technorati Tags:
coffee, starbucks
