Monday, July 09, 2007

Starbucks going downhill

Starbucks is finally starting to go downhill. I always kind of liked the place because they pay for health insurance for the employees, which is no minor expense. Their espressos were also fairly good. However, they recently switched some sort of automated pre-packed espresso pod process, which, for one thing, takes all the art and skill out of making espresso. It also eliminated the spectacle of the espresso being created, because any fool can press a button. Furthermore, there is none of that coffee ground smell in Starbucks these days, because everything is shipped in in vacuum-packed pods. They have the kind of marked dominance now where they can continue to degrade their product in the interest of profit margins and people won't be able to go anywhere else because they own most of the coffee shops in many areas.
Their food also doesn't look as good, maybe because they went along with the "no trans-fat" thing, which is overblown and oversimplified in my opinion. All in all, Starbucks in getting worse and worse, and they have bought up all the alternatives, so the customer suffers.

Luckily, Corvallis people can go to the Beanery

1 comment:

Samuel John Klein said...

We only go to Starbucks when there are no other alternatives.

Their product has delcined in quality-seriously-for a while. The burned-bean taste of the last Starubucks house I drank lives in my mouth still.

You additonally say this:

Luckily, Corvallis people can go to the Beanery

May God always smile benificently on the mighty Beanery. I worked there as a janitor back around 1990; there was never a better place to work as a janitor at the 2nd Street and 26th Street Beaneries. I got to take home the unused daily grind, and doted on Allann Bros house coffee for years for free; it is still, in my opinion, a blend for all reasons that is without parallel.

Up here in PDX we don't have Coffee People anymore but we do still have an armload of local shops with class and style, and Dutch Bros is slowly moving in (they have good coffee and cool, pumped employees-none friendlier). We have Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which we love.

If Alan went and opened him a Bean up here in Portland, we'd be so there though. He really "got" coffee and coffee-culture. That there's still a Bean is evidence that he still does.