Coffee Coffee Coffee

On one of the first episodes of the Gilmore Girls after it jumped the shark, Lorelai has broken up with Luke so she had to get her coffee somewhere else. The woman brings her 3 coffees to go and Lorelai protests that she didn't ask for three. The woman tells her that she said "Coffee, coffee, coffee" and so that is three coffees. This is sort of about how bad that show became but also about coffee and how badly S-bucks is trying to convince the wall street journal that this isn't the end of its exponential growth.

Big changes S-bucks is making:

* They rolled out a signature coffee: Pikes Place Blend, that they claim is fresh, fresh, fresh (fresh picked, fresh roasted, fresh brewed). Now their coffee was always fresh brewed within the half hour, but that didn't prevent it from tasting burned (I guess that was one of their "flavors"). Well PPB has that burnt flavor, but it lacks all the other flavors that make their usual coffee good. This girl on the street was giving out coupons, and she didn't really want to do her job, so she gave me, like 60 coupons for a free cup of coffee each. Effect: PPB is all I've been drinking; I've had it with milk, half and half, skim milk, black, and its not good any way. The dairy overpowers all the flavor, and drinking it black, all you taste is that burnt flavor that people hate.

* They are posting when and where the coffee was roasted. Honestly, its not really the same as going to a cute little shop where they roast themselves. Its sort of like when you go to Wholefoods and they tell you your kiwi came from chile, and you think, "thats pretty far away. I wonder what this is doing to my carbon footprint. Hey, that other kiwi came from upstate. I bet it was grown in a greenhouse. That's got a carbon footprint, too. Why the hell am I shopping at Wholefoods? This crap is all overpriced" Except, with roasting you think, "So this coffee was roasted in Pennsylvania. Do they have, like, a roasting plant there. And it was roasted two weeks ago. What's the shelf life for coffee? Does free coffee justify paying $3 for a muffin? Why am I bothering to wait in this line?" It really just highlights the fact that it wasn't roasted onsite, it was roasted in some warehouse and then trucked in, which is sort of what you always assumed.

* They also claim that they are trying to make the stores more like the local coffeeshops that they are competing with and that they started as. Yeah, well, at a cute little coffeeshop they won't try to sell you itunes giftcards or give away terrible itunes downloads, unless they are of, like, the band of the barista. Barista, what a stupid, pretentious name. Seriously, I've been downloading the free songs and they are so bad that I don't want anyone to see them on my ipod; free sometimes has hidden costs. And they have these little preprinted index cards asking what I think. So where does that card go if I fill it out? Will Seattle respond if I tell them that every Sbucks in NYC could use three times as many bathrooms and way more cleaning people? If I send a comment about "my" Starbucks how will they know which one I mean if there are eight within a half mile radius of me?

But what really grinds my gears is that they have gone back to the original logo, but this time they've obscured the breasts, no more nipples. The image above is the first logo from the Seattle store. The one to the right is what all Sbucks are using now. Look closely and you will see the Brook-Shields-in-Blue-Lagoon look of hair glued to the breasts.

Now, what were they thinking? Its like some high-up convinced everyone that if they just went back to the first logo, things would be great again, just like they used to be. Then someone from legal came in and told them that Americans can't handle exposed breasts.

This crappy compromise is emblematic of the other half assed changes. Honestly, Sbucks, you sell overpriced coffee and a whole lot of crap. These subtle changes really just make you seem like the pretentious aholes you are.

Yeah, but, what keeps me awake at night is that Sbucks bought Clover, who makes this machine. Right now, at a few coffee connoisseur shops, you can get great coffee brewed on a clover, coffee made from beans that were curated by people visit small farms in coffee regions and encourage good growth techniques a la wine buyers. This is coffee that is definitely worth $3 a cup, and maybe $5 a cup.

I love Cafe Grumpy (as well as the other clover brewing cafes) and I love good coffee and I hope that Sbucks doesn't prevent small, nice cafes from buying Clovers.