Your thoughts on Starbucks?

[spikepipsqueak]

I think it was a SB I went to in Broken Hill because I wanted to hit them up for their wi-fi.

I don't drink much coffee and the cocoa I got was revolting. The girl behind the counter was quite supercilious because I wasn't using the correct terminology about their drinks, and the wi-fi wasn't working, which they didn't tell me until after I had my revolting cocoa.

The wi-fi at the library was working, and they didn't insist I have a sugar overdose.

 

[DBT]

Why they put so much sugar into Cocoa and hot chocolate is beyond my ability to comprehend.

 

[Underseer]

You left off "addictive" on your poll. I've joked many times that years from now evidence will surface that Stabucks adds something to their coffee that causes an addiction similar to the way tobacco companies purposely increase the addictivness of cigarettes.

Up until a few years ago, I was not a coffee drinker at all. I drank tea, never coffee. I still don't drink "coffee" - can't stand it. But I drink Starbucks calories in a cup on a regular basis

The secret additive is not so secret.



If you buy coffee from a "regular" American restaurant, you have to add the sugar yourself. Then you would be able to see how much fucking sugar you're adding and realize that maybe that much sugar is not such a good idea. If someone else adds the sweet stuff, then you don't actually see how much sugar is going in, you just know that it tastes good.

 

[Politesse]

I dislike them as a company. They did play a formative role in creating the second-wave coffeeshop, which I see as both a personally enjoyable trend, and probably a critical corporate response to the issue of dwindling safe public spaces. So, credit where credit is due, there. I'm aware that the little independent cafes I do like and spend time in likely owe part of their perceived commercial viablity to the public spectacle of Starbucks' bizarre global conquest.

But I do not care for their coffee, and have lost respect for them over the years due to their response to the various crises that have come along. The recent race seminar is only the latest in a long history of ostentatious public "floggings" of their barely-compensated staff for the crimes of the corporation. The tendency to do exactly this is one of my least favorite aspects of American business culture, and Starbucks has made themselves an exemplar of it. I hope Howard Shultz continues to dismiss media hints in the direction of the presidency. It would be an even greater tooth-grinding moment for me than Hillary, if I had to vote for the jerk on political grounds.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Just for fun...

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has always been a big gambler and used to hang out at a Brooklyn social club that was known for its high-stakes poker games, a new book alleges.

“Mob Boss,” the Mafia tell-all by Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins, tells of a meeting between Schultz and Alfonso “Little Al” D’Arco, the former acting boss of the Luchese crime family.

D’Arco met Schultz in the early 1980s in Canarsie, where Schultz was born and raised, at a mob club owned by Schultz’s friend Bruno Facciola, a Luchese soldier who was murdered in 1990.

“[Schultz’s] business was selling coffee filters. His biggest customer was Macy’s. He had the downstairs store, where they sold the kitchenware. He said he had just come back from the West Coast, from Seattle, because he said there were these guys out there with two little coffee shops who were buying 20 times the amount of filters that Macy’s was using,” D’Arco told the authors.

“So he says, ‘I had to go out there and see what this was all about.’ And he said he went out there and they had these two little stores called Starbucks. And he said him and his . . . men were putting up the money to buy the stores and expand.”

https://pagesix.com/2013/11/15/starbucks-ceo-hung-at-mob-club-known-for-high-stakes-poker-book/

"Mob Boss" btw is a good read.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You left off "addictive" on your poll. I've joked many times that years from now evidence will surface that Stabucks adds something to their coffee that causes an addiction similar to the way tobacco companies purposely increase the addictivness of cigarettes.

Up until a few years ago, I was not a coffee drinker at all. I drank tea, never coffee. I still don't drink "coffee" - can't stand it. But I drink Starbucks calories in a cup on a regular basis

The secret additive is not so secret.



If you buy coffee from a "regular" American restaurant, you have to add the sugar yourself. Then you would be able to see how much fucking sugar you're adding and realize that maybe that much sugar is not such a good idea. If someone else adds the sweet stuff, then you don't actually see how much sugar is going in, you just know that it tastes good.

Just sugar in their burnt coffee isn't enough. They need the cream to smooth it... the gobs of saturated fat that turns a relatively benign drink into an obesity epidemic.

 

[Underseer]

You left off "addictive" on your poll. I've joked many times that years from now evidence will surface that Stabucks adds something to their coffee that causes an addiction similar to the way tobacco companies purposely increase the addictivness of cigarettes.

Up until a few years ago, I was not a coffee drinker at all. I drank tea, never coffee. I still don't drink "coffee" - can't stand it. But I drink Starbucks calories in a cup on a regular basis

The secret additive is not so secret.



If you buy coffee from a "regular" American restaurant, you have to add the sugar yourself. Then you would be able to see how much fucking sugar you're adding and realize that maybe that much sugar is not such a good idea. If someone else adds the sweet stuff, then you don't actually see how much sugar is going in, you just know that it tastes good.

Just sugar in their burnt coffee isn't enough. They need the cream to smooth it... the gobs of saturated fat that turns a relatively benign drink into an obesity epidemic.

Wasn't it recently revealed that a lot of the "research" that blamed fat for obesity and other health problems with jimmied by the sugar industry in order to point the finger away from sugar?

 

[Kharakov]

I like some of their corporate policies...

 

[bilby]

Australians don't like Starbucks at all, mainly because Australians like good coffee.

They had about 100 stores here at their peak; Lost about AU$140 million (a little more than US$100 million), because nobody cared to drink there; And now have closed all their stores outside of the major tourist hubs, where they are almost entirely patronized by visiting foreigners.

SBS Australia summed it up in their show 'The Feed' (aired June 2, 2104) - https://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/story/why-starbucks-just-cant-crack-australian-market

CNBC finally caught up with this devastating news last week; Their online article (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/starbucks-australia-coffee-failure.html) concludes:

Today, there are 39 locations in the Brisbane, Melbourne, Gold Coast and Sydney areas, catering to tourists who visit those parts of the country. By slowing its growth and trying to cater more to tourists, Starbucks may have found a recipe for success in Australia.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

Never liked coffee, never been in a Starbucks. I've noticed them popping up here and there around Amsterdam, but never had a reason to enter one.

 

[DBT]

Just sugar in their burnt coffee isn't enough. They need the cream to smooth it... the gobs of saturated fat that turns a relatively benign drink into an obesity epidemic.

Wasn't it recently revealed that a lot of the "research" that blamed fat for obesity and other health problems with jimmied by the sugar industry in order to point the finger away from sugar?

Sort of like the tobacco industry tried to do for many years....

 

[Underseer]

Just sugar in their burnt coffee isn't enough. They need the cream to smooth it... the gobs of saturated fat that turns a relatively benign drink into an obesity epidemic.

Wasn't it recently revealed that a lot of the "research" that blamed fat for obesity and other health problems with jimmied by the sugar industry in order to point the finger away from sugar?

Sort of like the tobacco industry tried to do for many years....

This was actually successful for a time. I don't think anyone but very stupid people bought the tobacco industry's arguments about cancer.

Show

I'm old enough to remember when many if not most conservatives and libertarians argued that tobacco products don't cause cancer and insisted that the tobacco-cancer link was a fabrication by a liberal conspiracy of some kind.

 

[nolongtalk]

Surprised it's neutral!