The coffee sucks, the tables are all filled or dirty and sticky, the outside seating is in a parking lot, baking in the sun, the drive through is backed up to the interstate, the food is re-heated trash that costs a fortune, the atmosphere is boring factory produced trash, and the wifi is so slow it’s like it doesn’t exist.
Why. Why on earth would I go to starbucks
And yet they are still making loads of money. Mind you I’d kina hope they start to die so I can get one of their machines for home from liquidation auction.
They’re making so much money that they’re still opening Starbuckses across the street from Startbuckses. Make it make sense.
The line must go up
People are absolute zombies for it. In the airport, there’s always a line into the concourse for that overpriced burnt shit. There are other coffee and bagel and donut shops mere steps away whose coffee is cheaper and better.
I was in fucking midtown manhattan last week, with amazing coffee shops on every block. Still a line out the door at Starbucks. Like what the fuck, people.
Let’s just pretend Starbucks coffee didn’t taste like cheap, crusty asshole for a second… Fuck you, Brian!
It’s crazy how they can make their coffee taste like they simultaneously undercooked and also burned their coffee beans.
I think most of their “coffees” are caramel flavored milks
Has this man even been inside a Starbucks recently? They used to be loungy places people could chill, now they’re all bland, sparsely decorated, dirty, and uninviting. There is absolutely nothing premium about Starbucks, it’s basically a fast-food chain. Once again demonstrating how far removed CEOs are from reality
I’m happy to drink a $2 coffee from the gas station (probably a half gallon of it 🙂) and set the remaining $7 aside. Then again, I only get drip coffee and not any of the milkshake-y stuff Starbucks specializes in.
Fast food is expensive too. And it’s hurting their sales, and they can’t figure out that they need to slice profits, not the product.
Burger King is just inedible now. And by that I mean twice now I’ve eaten there, and then within an hour my stomach upset. Then followed by 12 hours of what can only be described as “VIOLENT DIARRHEA”. Yes, all caps, because thats the urgancy that situation called for.
Two different locations too. Plus the first time I went with a friend, and she got it too. The first time I chalked it off to being that particular location. Then, nearly 8 months later, different location, different city. Same result.
After that, Burger King is officially just as banned from my diet as taco bell is. Inedible.
Chipotle is still the king of food poisoning. They have a proven track record in toilet-related war crimes going back many years. Guess I’m adding BK to my no-go list now too.
Whereas I’ve never had food poisoning in the 10ish times I’ve eaten at Chipotle, Cici’s pizza is 3 for 3 for violence out both ends for me. The third time I was practically fooled into it, but I’d rather just starve next time (there won’t be one).
Inedible Now? Your same experience was mine over 15 years ago. I was getting stomach pains and shitting really bad every single time I had BK. He’ll even towards the end I couldn’t even swallow a fry. I had started switching to onion rings cause the fries left a wax taste in my mouth after.
I haven’t had BK since then. 2010 ish. I ended up dropping all fast food after Covid cause the prices just don’t match up with quality anymore.
I heard a single combo meal at McDonalds clocks in near $20 these days. Fuck that noise. Not for a thin, dry “meat” patty that gets microwaved and then thrown between a pair of bread slices. No sir. No thanks. I rather spend that $20 on take out from a real restaurant.
It doesn’t help when a good chunk of their customer base still goes on a regular basis. I often see long lines at drive thrus in my area despite combos costing $10+.
Hey buddy, those yachts aren’t gonna buy themselves. What do you expect them to do, live on less?
The profit is the product
Why should he go to a place for the rabble?
Came here to say this. What ‘premium’ experience is he talking about?
Something tells me that the only Starbucks he actually has used recently is likely a very high-end version for the C titles in HQ, meters away from his office and for employee use only.
He’s talking about the Starbucks experience he has. Headquarters will always be the perfect Starbucks, and if he goes to a real shop, it’ll be a newly opened one with a new special item. He doesn’t go to the actual shops people probably associate with Starbucks.
They’re calling it an experience becuase consumers are indicating they are willing to pay for experiences while pulling back spending on daily expenses.
Consumers mean concerts and vacations and this douche knows he isn’t actually offering an experience so he does the mind trick where he says the term over and over to associate in the consumers mind the idea that drive thru coffee is an experience.
Absolutely. It was a clear attempt at adding ‘perceived value’ by using the word ‘experience’ so many times. He knows what type of consumer he’s speaking to.
These interviews are really just PR opportunities for guys like this (in their perception).
The interviewer should have pushed back and asked what made it premium.
Aren’t they all just like this? /s
https://www.starbucksreserve.com/locations/chicago-roastery
I was able to walk through that premium experience for free. I’m not sufficiently bougie to appreciate investor grade coffee, tho.
When I want to lounge at a café, I’m expecting a warm, inviting interior, some plants, bookish decor, smooth jazz, hip staff, and a coffee that could only be produced by coffee geeks with attention to detail at every step of the process…
You walk into a starbucks today, everything is cold and industrial, they’ve got pop music blaring on the radio, and the staff all look miserable. Oh, and the coffee sucks.
I remember 90’s era Starbucks and a bunch were still pretty grungy corners of strip malls. But the point was they were still coffeeshops, despite being a chain that went corporate.
Now they’re glorified coffee stands with real estate baggage and little sandwiches. And zero of that ‘third place’ shit they used to dominate the market.
Look at the clip without sound. It’s like a rubber doll, no emotions what so ever.
I hate this trend of putting shit at the beginning that I then have to hear again less than 10 seconds later. Like I get it’s for grabbing you but the second I start hearing the same thing again I immediately close the video.
It matters a lot more on platforms like TikTok, where there’s no title, no thumbnail, all you have is the first two seconds of the video before someone swipes away
So, the problem isn’t the video, but the fact that places like tiktok exist. Even worse is that they’re spreading
The labor for serving the cup alone is worth $5 alone then the labor to cut the beens is another $5 then the labor to run the factory that’s another $5 then the labor to drive the truck that’s another $5 that’s a $20 cup if we weren’t using slave labor.
Starbucks is awful all around
Buck Starfucks!! Upstate NY here. Stewart’s 4ever, bitches!!
Well it’s not $10. Hah! You could excuse any price like that, “well it’s not $1 more than the currently listed price” What a deal!!!
Never mind the coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker. But their hot chocolate sucks too. If you’re a cafe type store can can’t get hot chocolate right…
My coffee experience is fine thank you. Every morning I boil the kettle, hand crank the grinder while it’s heating. Combine in the French press, wait a minute, stir, wait 4-5 more, press and pour into my mug.
It’s a great morning routine, less than 10 minutes, cheap and results in a great cup. I have no interest in the coffee flavored milkshakes they serve so why would I ever set foot in a coffee shop?
It’s worse than that. Obviously he’s not talking about the coffee. He doesn’t even paint it as good-quality coffee. He’s saying people go for the experience of enjoying the coffee in a pleasant environment. He actually believes people go to Starbucks because they like being at Starbucks.
That used to be their whole shtick, the third place experience. They wanted people to treat Starbucks as where they go when they want to relax or meet with friends, a place outside of their home and work, where the baristas knew their names and would chat and make them feel welcome. Especially a lot of older folks liked that, and would make it part of their routine. Starbucks threw that all away when they went to prioritising drive thru and mobile order/pay systems. It’s a shareholder business and this is capitalism. It’s either neverending growth or death.
He can try to defend it, doesn’t mean I’m paying for it. I could buy a civet to shit in my cup for $9!
What the fuck is premium about Starbucks?
The price
It’s seen as a premium or at least different experience by some people here because you generally gotta sit on a boat for 16 hours to get to Starbucks (or now I think you can also get it on the boat to Stockholm or Helsinki, at some point you actually had to go to Stockholm). But also the people who see it as a premium experience normally just drink coffee at home, or from a crappy machine at work, or grab one from a gas station (which is already better than what most people make at home. I mean average people, not coffee fans. Coffee is just a tool for most). Not at a nice cafe here in Estonia. Anyone who does that probably doesn’t see Tarbrush as a premium place.
Income cohort…
I’m surprised he didn’t mention the “sense of pride and accomplishment” buying a $9 coffee would bring -_-
