there a countless people like you that work for Starbucks. People who know, love, and have a deep passion for coffee. You should be happy and proud to work for a place that sells some of the BEST whole bean coffee in the world and is able to deliver it to people who, otherwise, would never have had a chance to try it.
Gee - spoken like someone who's never had the opportunity to try some of the world's truly great coffee (properly roasted and super-fresh). Try ordering some coffee from the small-time roasters commonly mentioned in these forums...
Usagi Said:
The Verismo is perfectly capable of pulling a shot that 99% of your customers will be pleased with. The other 1% can go down the street to the indy place and support them. Its that healthy compitition and debate that makes our industry so much fun.
We've been through this before, Mr. StarB's. The 99% of the population you refer to are NOT coffeegeeks. McD's is perfectly capable of serving a meal that a large percentage of the population can enjoy, but doesn't hold a candle to a prime steak perfectly aged, carefully cut, and lovingly grilled.
The bottom line is that Starbux does NOT serve very good espresso. Anyone who enjoys a well-made espresso shot (straight) would consider Starbies' espresso to be drek (akin to dirty dishwater).
Now if you enjoy mocha-whip-caramel-whatever with lotsa whipped cream and frothy foam that stands up by itself then you can't beat Starbux. They do also have very good service and cool hardware (I have a great mug from there).
To be perfectly honest, I did order a drink at SB's to "get by" (I got a small vanilla latte with 4 "espresso" shots at the Atlanta airport during a layover for a fix, and I was able to drink more than 1/2 of it). AND it's good that SB's has done so much to promote specialty coffee.
SB's isn't evil (usually), but no true espresso lover would EVER think the drek they serve is good espresso.
The thing about all these comparasions of Starbuck's coffee to McD's food or Target's clothes, is that at least the latter are CHEAP. StB's is as expensive or more expensive than any indy shop, even when it's just a superauto in a hotel lobby.
A StB's opened up across the street from my office two months ago. There is also a Peet's about 5 blocks away, that everyone in the office used to go to a couple times a week. We would also brew coffee in the office, which was what people primarily drank. Now nobody brews coffee OR treks to the Peet's. Everyone is constantly going over to StB's, and ordering things like strawberry frappacino's that don't even have coffee in them (um, a milkshake?). The people who work at StB's aren't particularily nice, and the espresso is completely bland (not horrible -- just doesn't really have...anything).
azimouth4 , don't let these guys get you down. Starbucks has gone through a creepy little change in the last few years that a lot of us don't agree with. They did away with a lot of the core espresso bar training and threw in a lot of service with a smile BS. A lot of us were mad as the change swept through, but you do what you have to do. My advice is to keep reading all the front of the house books and playing with the equipment as much as you can. If you really have the passion for great coffee and great bar drinks, I promise that you are in the right company. Keep that passion and share it with your other partners. You may not know it from the stuff you read on on these forums, but there a countless people like you that work for Starbucks. People who know, love, and have a deep passion for coffee. You should be happy and proud to work for a place that sells some of the BEST whole bean coffee in the world and is able to deliver it to people who, otherwise, would never have had a chance to try it. The whole thing about the superauto...well, we'd all love to have the LM back, but it just isn't gonna happen. That doesn't mean you can't make a really high quality drink though. The Verismo is perfectly capable of pulling a shot that 99% of your customers will be pleased with. The other 1% can go down the street to the indy place and support them. Its that healthy compitition and debate that makes our industry so much fun.
I see you're from portland, do you ever go to Stumptown? How would you say they compare to Starbies?
No comparison. period. Living and working in Portland - I frequent stumptown several times per week, their attention to detail is unparalleled.
Usagi Said:
there a countless people like you that work for Starbucks. People who know, love, and have a deep passion for coffee. You should be happy and proud to work for a place that sells some of the BEST whole bean coffee in the world and is able to deliver it to people who, otherwise, would never have had a chance to try it.
Posted December 7, 2004 link Gee - spoken like someone who's never had the opportunity to try some of the world's truly great coffee (properly roasted and super-fresh). Try ordering some coffee from the small-time roasters commonly mentioned in these forums...
Agree with JonR10 100%. Go to Stumptown and purchase some beans that were roasted the previous morning. Better yet - pull shots with both and do that side by side taste test. No comparison.
heard a good quote today: just because they were first, doesn't mean they're the best.
you can learn all you want, you can be the best barista you can be, but there comes a time when your work environment is not conducive to it... and you become limited by your equipment. been there done that. it sucks. you'll eventually end up looking to work for someone that knows something about coffee.
i have a theory that the popularity of the chain is a 'guarantee of mediocrity' you'll never be amazed, you'll probably never spit your drink out in disgust (CGers not included there), but you'll be able to find the same cup, on every corner, in every city in north america, with the same automatons behind the counter.
Do you mean that Starbucks was the first? If yes then I'd like to clear up a common misconception. Starbucks began in 1971. It was a small one-store operation that roasted beans and served drip. Howard Schultz didn't start Starbucks or own it. He did work for the company in the early 80's but left in 1985 to start his own company, Il Giornale, because he wanted to do espresso. He later got some financing together and Il Giornale bought Starbucks in 1987 when Starbucks only had a couple of stores (maybe a few, I don't recall). Schultz liked the Starbucks name better than his Il Gironale so he adopted it instead.
Starbucks likes to imply in its marketing that it has been a crusader for Italian-style espresso since 1971, but in realty that came after Schultz bought it in 1987. By 1987 Seattle was full of espresso bars and sidewalk carts. Even Nordstrom had started putting coffee carts in front of its stores by then.
So Starbucks wasn't the first. I don't know who was the "first," perhaps the Brooklyn Cafe at the Univ. of Wash. More likely some Italian restaurant somewhere in 1952. The first espresso cart downtown was Monorail Espresso by Chuck Beek, who is credited with starting the Seattle espresso trend, in 1978 I think it was.
So Starbucks wasn't the first. It's had the super-dark roast / lots of milk style since the 80s. Some like it, most don't.
I'm sure geek didn't mean that starbucks was the first. Perhaps he meant many people started their their coffee experience with starbucks (since they're pretty much on every corner of every other street). But he did make a good point that in the world of *$, your skills as a barista (I use that term loosely), know matter what you do, cannot surpass that 'glass ceiling', where the real skill lies.
Or maybe he did mean *$ was first, I could be wrong too =)
I fall into the category of "OLD coffeegeek", having been educated in the wonders of fine coffee at the knee of Howard Schultz in a small Kitchen Gadget shop in Burien, Washington back in the early 80's. He was going around with a slide carousel and 6 french press pots teaching classes to people like me that thought fine coffee was a fresh can of Chock-Full-o-Nuts. He showed slides of his trips to coffee growing areas and talked about how the location effected the taste. We were all shocked and delighted to find that there were actually coffees like that out there. He worked with a dedicated staff of people to build the company and educate the west coast masses.
But Starbucks, like any entity that goes public, has lost contact with it's roots. Does anyone remember when Starbucks roasted the coffee to different levels depending on the bean? That became Full City Roast. Much easier to mass produce. Then we learned about espresso from the same people. I remember how startled my mouth was after my first straight shot at the Pike Place Satrbucks. That has mutated into all the foo-foo stuff that they serve now (plus all the flavorings cover up the effects of full city roast).
Guess what I'm saying is "GET OVER IT!". The Starbucks that you remember is gone. But if you remember any of the stuff in the earlier paragraphs, that's a good thing. Remember it fondly as you savor your next cuppa. Roast your beans, grind them to perfection, brew them in your choosen manner, and sip away. But remember that it was Starbucks and the small startup companies like them all over the place that made that places like your favorite coffee bar reality today. I hate to sound sappy, but I feel that I owe alot of my coffee pleasure to the people at companies like Starbucks, Stewart Brothers (aka Seattle's Best), and the rest.
I hate to sound sappy, but I feel that I owe alot of my coffee pleasure to the people at companies like Starbucks, Stewart Brothers (aka Seattle's Best), and the rest.
Funny, because all of these places are now owned by the now Starbucks Corporation, and any quality they offered has been replaced by a Starbucks Corporation cost formula. The problem is not that Starbucks has traded it's quality in becoming the world's leading coffee corp., but they have eaten up so many of the other coffee companies out there that were offering quality coffee. This is happening at all levels, from the larger franchises all the way down to the little coffee shops that we love.
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