confessions of a starbuckener

[rezendi]

Starbucken¹ Internationale

	America	Canada	UK	France
Ubiquity	You remember that Simpsons episode where they go into a mall and every store is a Starbucks?	Omnipresent in Toronto (often directly next to or across from a Second Cup), rare elsewhere.	Everywhere in Central London, probably more common than even in Manhattan. Uncommon elsewhere.	One near metro Odéon, another opening up soon in Les Halles
Coffee sizes	Tall, grande, venti. No small.	Small - but you have to ask for it, it's not on the menu board - tall, grande, venti	Tall, grande, venti. No small.	Petit, moyen, grande. Venti exists, but you have to ask for it.
Coffee-of-the-day variations	None.	Dark Roast or Mild?	Normal or Fair Trade?	None. (and it's coffee "de la semaine", ie of the week, not of the day.)
Food	Pastries.	Pastries.	Pastries, sandwiches, salads, paninis they grill for you.	Pastries, sandwiches, salads.
Wi-Fi	Ubiquitous and reasonably priced on a monthly basis.	No.	Sometimes, but outrageously expensive.	No.
Commercial success	Variable, but generally successful.	Doing OK, but Second Cup is putting up a ferocious fight.	Very successful, largely because the previous competition was pretty much uniformly awful.	Too soon to tell, but the one at Odéon is always thronging with people, half tourists, half French.
Approximate average US$ price of a regular filter coffee	1.55	1.10	2.75	2.75

¹"Starbucken" is the plural of "Starbucks". A "Starbuckener" is a person who frequents Starbucks. Where did I get these words? I, er, made them up.

I am a fan of Starbucks. I am proud, yes, proud to say this, I do not think I am committing a moral or cultural sin by frequenting them, and I'll take you on one at a time or all in a group if I hafta!

Seriously, I don't understand the intense vitriol that Starbucks inspires in so many people. They serve somewhat overpriced coffee in pleasant surroundings. This is the work of the devil? Heck, even Oxfam is a fan, as cited here. I suppose it's not Starbucks itself but what it represents - the homogenization of the planet, the Evil Multinational Corporations that are Destroying The Earth, the Yuppie Scum who drink their coffee - which is so hated. And coffee being the second most internationally traded commodity in the world (after oil), coffee shops are a natural target for antiglobalisers. All the same, honestly, I just don't get it. But this leads inevitably into my pro-Third-World-sweatshop rant, and, well, we probably don't have time for that in this episode of The World According To rezendi.

I guess there's also the "destroys local coffee shops" argument. Except, first of all you all saw that South Park episode right?, and second of all, they don't. They just destroy the bad ones that people don't like. That's how competitive trade works. Good coffee shops survive, thrive, and innovate. It's capitalism in action at its finest.


Now reading: Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which is a fantasy novella wrapped inside a tale of doomed Depression-era love wrapped inside in a twentieth-century family saga told by a dying old woman. ("Oh," I can hear you all sniffing, "one of those".) Stunningly great, so far. Atwood is almost too good for her own good - her similes are amazing, but there are so many of them that if the rest of her writing was any less taut it would start to feel cluttered. It's interesting to compare and contrast with Richler, whose writing is livelier and more personal but doesn't have the same distant, devastating power. He's red wine; she's single-malt Scotch.


Still not sure if I'm going to go to India, but I think the visa problem is solved; I should be able to get a same-day visa from the consulate in Toronto, when back there early October. And for less than half the price it would cost in Paris. Why are things almost always much cheaper in Canada compared to the other First World places I go? I'm not complaining, I'm just economically bewildered.

20,000 words into my new book, I have decided it has gone horribly wrong almost from the start. At least I now think I know what I want to do with it. But in future I really gotta try to work more efficiently.

Comments

[lipbylipby.livejournal.com]

Wow. You really seem fascinated by Starbucks. That was an interesting post. I don't mind Starbucks. I think the coffee is over roasted. As far as bland corporate behemoths go, it's all right. I think I go back more than I should becaue you always know what you're going to get there.

[rdi.livejournal.com]

Additional row on the table: quality. I've heard from my brother that the coffee in London Starbucks is uniformly awful compared to Canada.

Personally, I do dislike 'em for personifying global homogenization and serving overpriced coffee. Also, I prefer the flavour of Timothy's. Although in Starby's favour they do apparently provide a decent benefits package to their staff, including part-timers.

Have to read more Atwood. You read "Oryx and Crake" yet?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I actually prefer Second Cup in Canada, as you of all people already know, but being uninational they don't provide interesting cultural differences, and besides, one can't really drink Second Cup coffee, with, you know, an insouciant in-your-face defiance. :)

"Oryx and Crake" is next-but-one on my planned reading list, after Richler's "Solomon Gursky Was Here". (I'm bingeing on CanCon.)

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

1. Actually, you CAN get a small in the US by request, but you have to really request it. "No, I don't mean tall - I mean SMALL."

2. The Starbucks' in my area have coffee of the day variations.

3. For Australia:
Quite common in Sydney and Melbourne, though not as ubiquitous as in the US, unseen in the 'burbs...I think there's one in Canberra.
Small, tall, grande, and you can get venti but you have to ask for it - and they serve it to you in REAL COFFEE CUPS.
Um, maybe?
Food: pastries (but very different from those in the US), some have sandwiches
Wifi: No (to our everlasting regret), but if you're lucky you can pick it up from a nearby hotel or office
Success: same as UK, from what we saw
Average price: don't know; don't drink regular coffee

For NZ - same as Australia, except they're located in a lot of smaller towns as well as the big cities.

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

I'd say they're in the bigger smaller towns here in NZ, such as Rotorua, and absent in other spots. Here they're pretty thorough about having sandwiches and savory pies in the food case.

The local attitude towards Starbucks in NZ is that you don't go for the coffee - if you want that you go to a local cafe chain that makes coffee a religion, and there are several - you go for the teas, the Frappucinos (there are over 20 variants, only half involving coffee), and the reliably stocked food case. Starbucks also stays open later than many of the NZ cafe chains, which close around 3 or 4. As in Australia, you wouldn't take someone you wanted to impress to a Starbucks. That's where the other local cafes come in.

I occasionally go to Starbucks here because I like their hot chocolate with whipped cream (most places here serve it with milk foam and endless chocolate syrup garnish, which can be very good, but it's not the hot chocolate I had as a kid in the US) and their vaguely American cinnamon buns (the only ones in NZ). Three weeks ago, I went to a Starbucks near where I work. I hadn't been near Starbucks in months, but it was a very cold day and I thought I deserved a hot chocolate. As I sat there sipping, one of my co-workers came by and said, "Of course the American is at Starbucks!"

I'm very proud of myself for not killing this co-worker.

[valdelane.livejournal.com]

Your Kink is OK. But, for the sake of conversation, I offer these notes:

1. In downtown Vancouver, there is an intersection with a bakery with decent coffee on one corner, a very good local coffee shop on another corner, and two Starbucken with sub-standard[2] coffee on kitty-corners. All four shops were quite busy in the winter when I was visiting.
   
   
2. Wait — by definition, Starbucks coffee is now the standard. Which makes most of the other coffee taste better, in my opinion.
   
   
3. More than once, Starbucks employees have corrected my order for a large or enormous coffee, actually refusing take the order until I said the V word.
   
   
4. I required ubiquitous wi-fi for about a year, so subscribed to the T-Mobile service, theoretically present in all domestic Starbucken — actually operational perhaps four out of five times. T-Mobile customer and technical service suck monkey balls.
   
   
5. I disliked the Starbucks brews so much that I stopped ordering them for most of the last three months of the T-Mobile contract.
   
   
6. While I am largely a fan of capitalism, I resent Starbucks driving local shops out of business. Some of them were excellent; but the American public has spoken &mdash especially in the suburbs: a consistent experience is more important than a quality experience (apply to beverages, food, and most shopping). Hmmm, I suppose that really means I resent the American public more than the corporation.
   
   
7. I adored that Simpsons episode. A Starbucks in the bathroom of Starbucks!
   
   

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

More than once, Starbucks employees ... actually refusing to take the order until I said the V word.

I admit, that would piss me off a lot too. (I mean, how unclear is 'enormous'?)

I actually feel nice things about their T-Mobile service, as I subscribed to their wi-fi service for my month in Los Angeles, one of their publicity guys gave me a 30-days-free access card, and I was lucky enough to always have it work.

a consistent experience is more important than a quality experience

Disliking them for being blandly consistent, I can respect.

[valdelane.livejournal.com]

Glad your wireless thingy worked all the time. What bugs me about the bland consistency isn't that Starbucks provides it, but that that vast majority of people want it. So, Starbucks is just tapping the market, I suppose.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I like Second Cup better, they have iced hot chocolate, and hot apple cider for winter.

There's a Starbucks in Cardiff. I don't even like coffee, but it was just so nice to be able to sit down somewhere no-smoking and air-conditioned. There's also one in Edinburgh.

And I hear from friends that there's one in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

[m4dh4tt3r.livejournal.com]

iced hot chocolate? isn't that just chocolate milk? :-)

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

No, it's not the same. I had it at the Starbucks (and other cafes) in Tokyo, and am still sad it's not sold in the US.

[m4dh4tt3r.livejournal.com]

my objection to starbucks is largely in their quality of coffee. they overroast their beans, so their coffee tastes awful.

i also object to their business practice of opening a store on every corner until they start to put each other out of business. they drive out smaller, local coffee shops that have better quality coffee and service.

the major advantage to a chain is brand recognition and knowing you'll get the same thing every time, which is something i can respect.

that said, they aren't nearly as evil of a corporation as, say, haliburton.

[agntprovocateur.livejournal.com]

i second mr. hatter's remarks. when you buy coffee from a local roastery, you can get real info about it's complex or distinctive flavor and not just a graphic sticker that says what it is. :)

it's the taste that tells me if it's quality coffee. it is not. s'bucks is better than diner coffee, and infinitely better than airport or 7 eleven coffee.

it's emergency caffeine! and i agree, in pleasant surroundings. they have THAT goign for them.

btw, where i work, we have at least 5 s'bucks within 3 blocks. i go to cafe madeleine instead. they foodstuff is pricey but they mochas are cheaper and better than sbucks!

[kalyx.livejournal.com]

I personally don't have anything against Starbucks. In fact, they were a godsend in the midwest since it was the only place that I had any prayer of getting a decent latte. It was still too often scorched, but at least it approached tasting like a latte.

Now that I am in Seattle, I frequent the smaller chains and local shops as they tend to be a bit less expensive and have a better cup of coffee. And finding a short around here is pointless. I have yet to find any place that sells anything smaller than a tall. But if you want two shots with any steamed milk, they won't fit into a short anyway and doubles are the norm. (sorry used to be a barista and hated it when someone would want a short double... it just doesn't fit!)

I just finished Oryx and Crake by Atwood and it was amazing. I'll have to read the blind assassin sometime. She rocks!

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't seen that Simpson's episode. I don't have a TV.

And I haven't bothered entering a Starbuck's in over 10 years, because I don't drink coffee.

<wry grin> I seem not to be the target audience for your post.

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

Starbucken? ... Starbuccaneers!

I don't like their coffee, nor their hot chocolate. When one of my regular hangouts was a Starbucks it was a constant challenge finding the obligatory thing to order as the price of admission. I was sometimes driven to buying bottled water when I couldn't bear the thought of another one of their cookies (not that the cookies are bad, but night after night after night they lose their appeal...).

Some of the ones in Toronto were comfy enough to be a coffee shop hangout type of place. I haven't been into too many Vancouver ones, but when I have they seem to give a more hurried vibe, people who are stopping for a drink as a pause in a busy day. Not conducive to being a place to go and hang out on a regular basis.

Are there franchised Starbucken? At least some are not franchises: I raised this question with a barista* and she revealed the surprising (to me) fact that their store was not a franchise. It wasn't clear if she implied that there are no Starbucks franchises or if there were a mixture of franchise and corporate-owned stores. Anyhow, I guess that can vary country by country too. This was in Canada.

Any info on the source of the name? There's a character Starbuck in Moby Dick.

*I original thought "barista" was a pretentious invention of Starbucks, but Italian sources confirm that in Italian it is what a coffee maker is called. Of course, gratuitously using Italian can be pretentious** but in this case there's no good English equivalent. "Coffee girl" doesn't work for a guy. "Latte hotte" (with "hotte" rhyming with "latte") would work but it's too long and drawn out and insufficiently snappy for routine use. And the "certified coffee agent" of Second Cup sounds bizarre, like they go on cloak-and-daggers James Bond-style escapades involving coffee intrigue. "Cappucinista", maybe?

**cf. everywhere on College St. in Toronto. Sure it's Little Italy. But those uber-trendy little beautiful-people-go-there-to-be-seen-by-other-beautiful-people places (with no chairs, because people can't see you if you're sitting down) aren't doing it because they're authentic Italian, they're doing it because they're authentic pretentious...

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

Starbacchanalia!

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Clearly, Starbacchanalia are the secret, after-hours sex-drugs-and-coffee orgies held in select suburban Starbucks branches at 3AM. Only the most devout Starbuckeners (the Starbuckenoscenti?)are invited.

Or maybe they're part of Phase Two (http://students.washington.edu/greenbam/humor/starbucks.html).

[zipties-revenge.livejournal.com]

i'm friends with pretty much everyone who works in coffeehouses in [this small town of my summer residence]. i also make the coffee drinks.

i think that "coffee snobs" works pretty well to describe us. the only problem with it is that it's a little overgeneral. but i suppose that we just call snotty customers "bastards" instead.

[ivy]

I generally dislike Starbucks's food and drink -- their tea selection isn't really good, and their pastries are all fattier than I prefer them. Their black tea offering (usually Tazo's "Awake") is too strong for my tastes, and they don't have a good Darjeeling or Ceylon or green tea to offset it. Even a nice genmaicha would make me happy.

However, they do have wifi uplink, and for that I like them. Consistently being able to find Internet access is very nice for me.

Atwood -- I quite agree. I haven't read "The Blind Assassin" yet, but I've ripped through three or four of her other novels all in one literary plunge, and gone back to reread "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Cat's Eye" since. Some of her characters are captured in such a strikingly well done awful way.

[zipties-revenge.livejournal.com]

my opinion: works in a pinch.
but damn, i'd be ordering something other than coffee, since theirs is overroasted all to hell.

& man, living in a town with nowhere to go but coffeehouses & working in one doesn't help the coffee-snobbery. besides . . . why pay for what i can make myself at work?

i kind of enjoy the hit-or-miss aspect of the local coffeehouse experience, but if ya likes yer latt-ay like starbucks makes, then hell. why not?

ps i've always wondered that about canada.

[redshrike.livejournal.com]

i chime in, a few days late, to point out the appropriate soundtrack for this post:

mike doughty's bustin' up a starbucks, live recording, complete with his "i'm a patsy for the man" comment.