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Not to mention, buying local is better quality and cheaper.
Wiah I lived where coffee beans are grown, must be great!
Started going to a small local coffee shop a little over two years ago, and I’ll never go back to the giant chains. The people working are always happy, greet regulars by name, always go out of their way to interact or talk with me- usually remember something we talked about before, comp my orders every now and then, host little events, etc. It’s not just them either - I always have a way better experience going to non-chain coffee places. Oh, and the coffee is always waay better and priced better.
Sometimes I’ll work out of a small local cafe that roasts their own beans on site.
It’s insane how much better the coffee is for the same price, and they know my order before I even say anything.
Plus, I can get excellent beans from them to brew at home, and I’m supporting a local business instead of a megacorp.
Dutch Bros is where it’s at. Actually good roasts and the same price or less. That said, I make my own Americano at home in about 2 min while making breakfast and it’s consistently great.
Dutch Bros. has been good every time I’ve tried them. I don’t believe their coffee is markedly better than any other coffee chain. It comes down to how much you pay your staff, so that they give a shit about their jobs, so that tasks like roasting beans and cleaning equipment is done properly and regularly.
Starbucks is known for its over roasted (burnt) flavor. That’s intentional. Dutch Bros doesn’t do that. Are they that much better than other smaller chains or independents? Probably not but they’re everywhere and easy to get in and out of.
Bullshit on it being priced better. Provide examples, not anecdotes. Where are you located?
Yeah! What’s your shoe size, OP? You got a dog? A cat? A mother? “Everyone” has one, right. You seriously expect us to believe that? Prove it! Come on, what’s her maiden name? Her date of birth? Her routing number! Where was she last thursday night, out back of bakers garage like she was supposed’ta be? Better make sure you get your facts straight OP, or me and my partner Flippy “The Iceman” here will show ya what we do to commenters down in jersey what don’t put up with our unreasonable demands, capiche?
First McDonald’s and now Starbucks. Cool. Screw em.
Now do Chipotle next!
But only when they don’t have Carne Asada
I stopped eating at Chipotle many years ago when my local Chipotle caused dozens of food poisoning cases. Luckily there are lots of mom-and-pop burrito joints where I live, and their food is almost always better and cheaper than Chipotle.
Only down 3%? I was hoping more. Still, fuck em. Maybe fewer consumers want to pay out the nose for a cup of flavored sugar with coffee?
Overpriced cafeinated milkshakes for adults
makeratingmasquerading as “coffee”.Starbucks customer: Ooof, don’t talk to me before I’ve had my morning coffee…Id like a Venti vanilla caramel mochaccino with 2 extra pumps of vanilla and double drizzle on the whipped cream…but low fat whipped cream
Low fat tho. Cause I don’t wanna get fat lol
Remember kids: fat bad, sugar good.
This message was financed by the fine people of the snack and fast food industry.
Oatmilk!
We are laughing at your misfortune, you fucking ghouls
For granted, there’s no shortage of coffee shops in my city. Locally operated and owned, and they have better coffee at better prices. Starbucks isn’t even a reasonable choice with so many better options available.
I’d always choose a smaller spot anyway. More casual and less crowded, but still doing good business.
Watching them trying to bust unionization efforts in their shops just totally turned me off the brand. I haven’t been into one of their shops or bought any of their products at retail since.
At this point I’ve found better local places but mostly I just got used to making my own iced coffee and it would be silly to bother going back.
Yep, this too. They used to feel cool despite being a large corporation. Now they feel like a corporate cesspool with Apps and anti-unions and $10 sandwiches smaller than the size of a drink coaster. It’s not fun anymore, and it’s not fun to just be there, especially with people running in and out with the App to just grab things.
But look in the positive side, although they probably lost or will lose 30% of their customer base, at least they can increase profits by 1 percent by having more back-end tracking data to sell from some remaining customers willing to download a shitty ad-infected closed source App!
I suggest a community owned and operated service where we can offer Starbucks and McDonald’s words of support during these especially difficult times…
But exactly because the times are difficult for them right now, WE CAN CHARGE THEM SURGE PRICING for the supportive messages!!! Let’s also
fireconduct an employment status reassignment activity for 60% of the human message writer workforce and replace them with AI and cheap offshore call centers!!! Also, let’s sell our now collected sadness data on Starbucks and McDonald’s to our third party partners like Kleenex so that they can also charge them surge prices for tissues as we have reliable data to show that they are crying right now!!!Lol reverse enshittification! Can I credit you as this concepts inventor?
We did this together… You and I.
Honestly, it wasn’t the $7 coffee that turned me away from starbucks. It was the $7 coffee that taste like toilet water, when there are no shortage of local, cheaper coffee shops with amazing brews made by people who actually want to be there, who also won’t be fired for unionizing.
I stopped going there when I realized it’s all just sugar. All the yummy drinks are just sugar.
My husband and I started going to the co-op and getting fancy coffee beans and make drip coffee each morning. Cheaper, just as delicious (if not even better), and we don’t have to go out
Coffee shop? More like a dessert-in-a-cup emporium! Finding normal coffee on the menu these days is like a treasure hunt. ha.
Well done, definitely better!
Have you stumbled across James Hoffmann’s videos perchance?
Stopping by to declare that James Hoffman is the best ☕
We love him!
I started boycotting Starbucks when I learned they had partnered with Nestle for store-bought products - their Sumatra and Komodo Dragon coffees were pretty good.
I send an email every year or so to let them know, since boycotts aren’t effective if the group being boycotted doesn’t know why, with predictably apathetic responses.
Anyway, if you’re a no-Nestle person then Starbucks is on the list…
Thanks! Did not know about the Nestle connection. We stopped going to Starbucks when it moved to a fast food type experience vs the cafe feel it had at launch here.
Will be verifying they moved the hell away from Nestle before we consider returning.
Awesome. Unfortunately the agreement was made “in perpetuity” so there’s no obvious route to them leaving Nestle.
That’s part of why I actually email them, and in the first email I said that I’m bothering to send anything because I do really like their stuff, and I think their other charitible actions mean I can hope they’ll take customer feedback. As opposed to Nestle which I expect to tell me to gfm.
I’ve steadily leaned away from that belief as the company digs farther in to being every crappy anti-labor chain.
The longtime running critique of Starbucks was that they were already an expensive luxury. Why push it and try to raise prices even further? That takes some serious delusion.
The funny thing is that Starbucks isn’t even “luxury”, their product is mediocre at best and mostly mocked by coffee enthusiasts
The sugar filled drinks are an insult to coffee.
It’s affordable status.
I doubt say, a Gucci handbag is of significantly greater quality than a handbag one might buy from target, but the former has that sweet, sweet logo.
Also, see Payless sold discount shoes at luxury prices — and it worked
No one thinks anyone has status because they drink Starbucks though
It’s not what other people think. It’s what the Starbucks customer perceives what other people think.
On the rare occasion that I buy retail coffee, it’s usually from the Race Trac gas station which has machines that grind the coffee beans and brew it fresh by the cup - nothing to erect a historical statue over, but a solid coffee for a low price.
When Starbucks loving coworkers see me walk in with my ghetto gas station coffee cup, they’ll generally mock me for it.
So I suppose you and I each have our own anecdotal data samples, and they apparently vary from each other quite a bit.
Omg, the consequences of all the giant corporations inflating prices for the last 4 years
The only time I ever go to Starbucks now is if I’m traveling and don’t want to stop and run in somewhere and it’s the only real option at the exit.
Their coffee is god-awful and always has been.
I will always go to local places before Starbucks. And even if I don’t want to get out of my car, local places with drive-throughs are becoming pretty common now. There’s several here. There’s a guy in a small town nearby who owns a tiny drive-up kiosk with a Starbuck’s on one side of town and another chain called Biggby’s being built on the other side of town. I talked to him about whether or not he’s worried. He’s not. He has a ton of loyal customers and offers a bunch of stuff that the others don’t, like a huge number of smoothie flavors and multiple types of cake you can get slices from. There’s even a fresh vegetable stand a friend with a farm set up next to the kiosk so you can get some fresh produce after you get coffee if you’re so inclined.
If you scorch coffee beans, all the nuance of their flavor is destroyed, leaving you with beans that taste like shit. However, the beans will also all taste the same no matter where they’re sourced from. I’m convinced this is why Starbucks coffee tastes like shit. They want it to have consistent flavor no matter where in the world you’re getting it. If you cover that with enough cream and sugar and artificial flavoring, you can make it palatable again.
Considering, like any other major fast food corporation, they likely have a large number of food scientists on staff who could absolutely make a better-tasting cup of coffee if they were tasked to, I think you’re on to something there.
McDonald’s is similar with pretty much all of their food. No, a Quarter Pounder doesn’t taste like a normal burger, but it essentially tastes the same in New York as it does in Vancouver or (I presume) Mexico City.
If McDonalds tastes the same everywhere as it does where I live how the hell are they still in business? Crap tastes like greasy (yet somehow also dry) styrofoam at this point.
First of all, many people just like it. Secondly, if you’re traveling, even if you don’t like it, you know you can rely on it to be what you expect.
Americans learning why Starbucks struggles overseas. I’m guessing the maturity of small coffee shops has caught up to the rest of us, so better coffee at better pricing is more abundant.
Struggle overseas?
I guess if you exclude Asia, UK, Canada, and Turkey… maybe
When people on lemmy say “overseas” or “the world”, they really only mean Europe.
Latin America is also obsessed.
