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It’s not only about the coffee. How would they find good quality pastries and bread for 15000 stores? How would they create a unique and cozy atmosphere? Food doesn’t scale like that. It’s the same with restaurants.
They are wrong. Are there any blind taste tests? It's harder than wine to test, but should be possible.
But the premise is incorrect anyway.
Enjoyment of food and drink is tied to way more than taste. History matters. Sight matters. The story matters. Variety matters. Routine matters. The people matter.
The trick is to get the coffee backhouse, without suspicion or losing all the extra things that matter and then use pods -
30% of Michelin-starred restaurants choose Nespresso machines https://www.grubstreet.com/2013/03/nespresso-sold-at-micheli...
Starbucks aren't trying to "beat" specialty espresso places. They aren't even in competition with them really. https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and... "Starbucks goal is to become the Third Place in our daily lives. (i.e. Home, Work and Starbucks) “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh…
Now I've been to SF and Peet's was excellent and there are similarly excellent coffee shops in many city centers. But where i live and work, Starbucks tends to be pretty much a cut above much else conveniently available
Starbucks aren't trying to "beat" specialty espresso places. They aren't even in competition with them really. https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and... "Starbucks goal is to become the Third Place in our daily lives. (i.e. Home, Work and Starbucks) “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh…
Because their strategy is to be easy, convenient, familiar, safe, etc. The food/coffee is pretty bad, but you know what you get. This apparently is what the masses want. Predictable experience.
Starbucks aren't trying to "beat" specialty espresso places. They aren't even in competition with them really. https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and... "Starbucks goal is to become the Third Place in our daily lives. (i.e. Home, Work and Starbucks) “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh…
While this IS true, i also find in my part of the world that the brewed coffee and beans from Starbucks is significantly and consistently superior to most things i am able to conveniently find. Now I've been to SF and Peet's was excellent and there are similarly excellent coffee shops in many city centers. But where i live and work, Starbucks tends to be pretty much a cut above much else conveniently available
http://www.daleisphere.com/the-intertwined-history-of-peets-...
"To this day Peet’s remains a largely a regional player though it has expanded to a few other U.S. states. It still makes the best chain-store coffee I’ve ever had – far surpassing the coffee made available at Starbucks"
This seems like something of an exaggeration. Peet's seems marginally better than Starbucks. Maybe.
Starbucks aren't trying to "beat" specialty espresso places. They aren't even in competition with them really. https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and... "Starbucks goal is to become the Third Place in our daily lives. (i.e. Home, Work and Starbucks) “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh…
While this IS true, i also find in my part of the world that the brewed coffee and beans from Starbucks is significantly and consistently superior to most things i am able to conveniently find. Now I've been to SF and Peet's was excellent and there are similarly excellent coffee shops in many city centers. But where i live and work, Starbucks tends to be pretty much a cut above much else conveniently available
If you're not plugged into the specialty coffee world, you'll think places like Peets are "excellent". Next time you go to SF, try Ritual and Blue Bottle and Sightglass (and my last visit there was 5-ish years back, so I'm certainly out of date with newer recommendations, and I seem to recall Blue Bottle "sold out" and may not be genuinely specialty grade coffee any more...)
25-30% of my rss feed is coffee-related, probably 20% of my Youtube subscriptions are coffee-related. The far end of the excellent coffee bell curve isn't _that_ hard to find, but here in Sydney, for example, many of the top 10-20 places are good enough that they're coffee destinations in their own right, and are not paying for high foot traffic locations in city centers. I've got four great roasters fairly nearby, all pretty much in the middle of light industrial hell. They're in between nondescript warehouses and bearing shops and panel beaters and down the street from new loft conversions selling the "hipster scene" they've partly created (along with the breweries and live music venue and motorcycle workshops nearby). People get in their cars or get a cab/Uber to go there because Hazel and Claire roast there, or because Dan is the head barista, or because Sasa trains everyone personally, or because Reuben sources all the green beans himself.
Go find _those_ places in your city, then tell us what you think of Peets and Starbucks... And maybe you won't care. Not eveybody does, and that's fine. Maybe it'll ruin you for life, and you'll never be able to drink mediocre coffee again - and you might think that's wonderful of you might hate me for it... But go find out...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this IS true, i also find in my part of the world that the brewed coffee and beans from Starbucks is significantly and consistently superior to most things i am able to conveniently find. Now I've been to SF and Peet's was excellent and there are similarly excellent coffee shops in many city centers. But where i live and work, Starbucks tends to be pretty much a cut above much else conveniently available
Oh sure. "Good enough". Because "most things" are crap. But you're prioritising "conveniently find" way over "coffee quality". I'll go an hour out of my way to find great coffee. Even when I travel I'll spend significant time researching the best coffee in the places I'm going. If you're not plugged into the specialty coffee world, you'll think places like Peets are "excellent". Next time you go to SF, try Ritual and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh sure. "Good enough". Because "most things" are crap. But you're prioritising "conveniently find" way over "coffee quality". I'll go an hour out of my way to find great coffee. Even when I travel I'll spend significant time researching the best coffee in the places I'm going. If you're not plugged into the specialty coffee world, you'll think places like Peets are "excellent". Next time you go to SF, try Ritual and…
Blue Bottle is majority owned by Nestle and seems OK but not particularly special.
Why doesn't Mcdonalds beat local artisan restaurants? Because their strategy is to be easy, convenient, familiar, safe, etc. The food/coffee is pretty bad, but you know what you get. This apparently is what the masses want. Predictable experience.
McDonald's food is bad in the same way that Coke is bad: it's made by a giant corporation, it's highly processed and contains questionable additives, it's readily available and heavily advertised, and consuming a lot of it will make you overweight and very unhealthy (see Super Size Me.) On the other hand, you can actually lose weight and potentially improve your lab numbers if you eat a low-calorie McDonald's diet (see The McDonald's Diet.)