I don't understand the appeal of Starbucks. Their products are prohibitively expensive and aren't even very good. It's like the McDonald's of coffee.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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Starbucks to cut 900 jobs and close dozens of North American stores as sales struggle
(www.theguardian.com)
Socially acceptable/normalized morning milkshake addiction.
Thats the appeal of Starbucks.
They sell coffee flavored milkshakes.
And both sugar and caffeine are addictive.
More like the Dairy Queen of coffee. Basically desserts with a little coffee flavoring. Order a simple espresso and they break down in tears.
Luckin will eat out their soft underbelly in 6 months.
Yep.
Try ordering a dirty chai, you'll probably just get a coffee and a chai latte poured together.
Exactly. Crap for the masses. Worked for McDonalds.
Taste is subjective. Personally, I decided to stop getting Starbucks along with as many other US companies as I can manage, but before that I enjoyed them, so did my partner.
In my city, we have hundreds of coffee shops. Which is good.
But they're all priced like Starbucks. Which is bad.
A big part of it is that they’ll let you have any weird combination you want. They’ve got a ton of syrups, different milks, cream, sweet creams, different roasts, different shots, a bunch of stuff and you can get it any which way. If you go to almost any other mainstream coffee place you won’t have nearly as many options and you probably can’t combine them in any way imaginable. I have a few friends who work at Starbucks and they’ve shown me some crazy complicated drink orders they’ve had to do before.
Now I don’t think those crazy combinations taste any good, I’ve tried some before that friends have liked or that my barista friends have given me as a taste, but if you’re someone who likes sweet drinks I could see the appeal. For what it’s worth, a vast majority of their consumer base (at least that I’ve seen and heard) are the exact stereotype.
The appeal is that it's like the McDonald's of coffee. Consistent, familiar, available, affordabl ish ( I know their prices aren't good but most high end local places will charge a lot too). If you don't understand McDonald's then what about pop music? All appealing to the middle of the bell curve. If you are reading Lemmy instead of reddit, its less likely that you tend to favor the middle of the bell curve on other things as well.
Stop going there, they don't treat employees right.
A lot of people have, hence the closures.
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Is not being able to afford coffee a good indicator of a looming recession?
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Closing unionized stores, eh? I'm sure that's a total coincidence.
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Billionaires are your enemy.
For #1 it's not coffee, it's fancy coffee.
You can get a basic cup of coffee at Dunkin' donuts or McDonald's or whatnot for a buck or two. Starbucks you end up with the venti half caff oat milk pumpkin spice latte with three pumps extra foam no drizzle or some similar thing that takes 10+ words to order, and it ends up being $7-$8ish. Add a pastry or sandwich and you're at $10-$15.
When the belt gets squeezed, that goes away in favor of the $2 Dunkin coffee and 99c donut.
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Overpriced, absurd wait lines and anti-union all for a subpar product so full of sugar it could kill a diabetic. No thanks I can find better coffee at a gas station
Probably about the union stores.
Good. They openly support Charlie Kirk and his rhetoric. Fuck those boot licking anti union fascists
... They're purposefully downsizing union stores more than others. They're using downsizing as an excuse to union bust.
Starbucks chars their beans because it masks the harsh flavor of the low quality beans. The other benefit for the mega corporation is that all burnt coffee tastes pretty much the same, meaning coffee origin and crop variations aren't important and every mediocre cup of Starbucks coffee taste the same. Whoever convinced the public that 'burnt' equaled 'high quality' was a marketing genius, but maybe the public's waking up to the scam.
Espresso made using even using a moderately priced home espresso machine and high quality beans is far superior to anything Starbucks puts out IMO. The machine can pay for itself in well under a year too.
This is absolutely the case. We love coffee here. For my partner especially, Starbucks used to be a daily habit. So I got a fancy expensive espresso machine, cost like $1,000. It has paid for itself many times over. Coffee is actually better IMHO- I like straight espresso and when the coffee isn't burnt you get a much more complex flavor. Fresher too- we get our beans from a local roaster, so the first cup out of the bag is made with beans roasted days ago not months ago.
Links to cheap machines under 300$? Anything i shouldnt skimp out on?
Costco and Amazon usually have some sub $300 machines around Black Friday including super automatics that do everything for you including grind the beans. I've used both supers and manual machines and prefer the convenience of the super automatic even though manual machines produce better coffee, IMO even with moderately priced Costco beans it's world's better than what Starbucks puts out.
This is $300 right now. Would you consider this one? https://www.costco.com/philips-800-series-fully-automatic-espresso-machine-with-milk-frother.product.4000161076.html
That was on sale last year and I took a look at it as a 2nd machine. I ended up with a bit nicer Philips from Amazon that was also on sale. Looking at Amazon right now the only thing you get for $100 more on their model 1200 is chrome. Another option for $50 more is a 2230 with an automatic milk frother, but I've repeatedly read that the daily cleaning requirements aren't worth the trouble and people wish they had just bought one with a manual frother.
If you don't need any additional features (like 1 button Café Americano), the Costco model should be a big upgrade from other home brewed coffee and better than what most chain stores serve. It won't be the quality of a high-end machine or an excellent coffee shop, but shots from these kinds of machines are quick, easy, and IMO taste quite good. (Espresso lovers with big dollars to spend and who don't mind the time and effort required with a manual machine won't agree.)
Start with a medium or light roast and take time to play with all the settings to find what you like best. You can change the grind, the quantity of coffee, quantity of water, and on some machines the water temperature. Philips sells a water filter that is designed to seriously reduce the amount of scale that builds up in the machine - worth the money IMO.
You're not supposed to freeze or refrigerate beans, but we did a blind taste test with beans stored in a sealed container on the counter for 1-2 weeks vs. beans frozen and then thawed in the fridge as needed. We far preferred the frozen/refrigerated beans. (Do not put frozen beans in any grinder, let them thaw first.)
Enjoy!
Thanks for that info! I bookmarked your message to come back to. I always refridgerate pre-ground beans; always taste better and last for like ever in a sealed mason jason in the fridge.
I swear I'm not a coffee snob. I have tried tons of different places and brands, both in store and at home. I have only had 2 or 3 brands/stores that are worse than Starbucks. I just can't get past the burnt overroasted flavor they seem love there.
I will say the roastery in Seattle did have a good microbatch specialty drink there, but even then, I've had way better.
Years ago my only exposure to coffee was through Dunkin and Starbucks. In 2021 I splurged on a breville bambino plus and grinder to try making my own because regularly purchasing from either was too costly.
I don't consider myself a coffee snob either (the shots I pull probably taste like shit to anyone who knows better) but I've learned to make a latte that tastes good to me! Since then I've been given Starbucks gift cards around the holidays, and damn - they're almost painful to use but have their place in an emergency. It's totally the thought that counts.
Dunkin can do now wrong! How dare you put them in the same sentence as Starbucks! /s
Grew up on the east coast. Drank lots of Dunkin.
My go-to is a nice light roast. You get a better coffee flavor and a higher caffeine content.
Meanwhile I can’t go anywhere else because it’s not roasted enough. Burn it and dump it down my throat!!!
Yeah economies fine everyone because you know how quickly americans skip coffee due to financial concerns.
A new Golden age for America!
Once shareholders feel entitled to endless increases in profit, the writing is on the wall. You cannot squeeze blood from a stone.
Okay so I make my coffee at home because I prefer it that way. I prefer my french press and my mocha pot. I prefer not adding to the trash waste of disposable Starbucks cups, lids, straws. I prefer to grab a cup of coffee at a small local owned shop if I do go out. I also really prefer not giving my money to billionaires. I’ve been boycotting billionaires as much as I can and I hope you all do to. If a recession is coming I hope we continue to circulate what little money we do have within our communities.
They did some odd stuff around here. Went too heavily into some markets to kill out the small coffee chains. Then they closed the stores that were too close together to actually be profitable. Which then left a hole in the market, which much smaller (physically & staffwise) coffee shops then sprang up to fill.
Unfortunately they went franchise pretty fast - there are developers who look for small shops like this they can quickly replicate and then sell, making the owner rich, and the rest of us suckers. It's why chains pop up, quiet chains, so fast these days.
Closing the Roastery? I guess they can get fully fucked then, that was the only place around herethey were doing something unique. There's a million places to get coffee around Seattle and they all sell pumpkin spice lattes.
Closing the roastery literally makes no sense
There's already not that many tourist attractions in Seattle itself, the roastery is probably one of the few, and because of that it gets free foot traffic
In the sense that Starbucks aren't coffee shops they're investment portfolios, it probably does
Expensive, mediocre coffee and snacks. Starbucks used to be fairly premium. Good pastries with a big selection, good coffee menu that was almost all coffee and not all sugary junk. There were couches, nice bar seats, books, magazines, newspapers… The coffee wasn’t a whole lot better, but it was better.
Now it’s cheap, light hard seats and a couple thin tables if you’re lucky. Some places only have bar style seats if even that much. They want you to get your coffee and leave. The menu is as more sugar laden confections than coffee. Good pastries are all gone, now it’s out of a plastic bag into the paper one you receive it in.
No wonder it’s failing.
Man, it's almost like pushing everyone into poverty in the pursuit of infinite growth had some long-term consequences.
Drinking Starbucks is masochism and Howard Schultz is a piece of shit
Cap CEO pay to 5x that of the lowest employee. This guy making 400 million / year while his employees struggle is demonic.
I used to be a loyal customer but now I wouldn't miss it if they closed all of them.
Recession even hit the white girls with daddy's credit card.
Is there anyone here that can talk about when SB first started getting big? I can only assume that when it was first opened as a single store they didn't intentionally burn the absolute shit out of their beans, but how about when it first started franchising? Was the coffee always garbage right from the beginning or did that come later?
Oh no! Anyway...
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