Culture

Starbucks Has Been Taken over by the Man

The “man” has been keeping us all down, and now he’s taken over Starbucks too—at least that’s what the Seattle coffee-snobs are saying.

Starbucks is not the haven for eco-conscious uber-hip Mac-users that it used to be. Now that it’s sold out and gone “corporate,” Starbucks no longer has the cache that it once enjoyed.

For most Seattleites, . . . “the watering down of the Starbucks experience” is stale news — akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet.

“Like, duh, I have felt that way about Starbucks for 10 years,” said Sean Seery, 36, an acupuncturist who sat one recent morning outside Victrola, a popular independent coffee shop on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Inside the coffee shop, it was un-Starbucks business as usual . . . Alone at a small table sat James Bullock, 45, a software consultant who said he often spends much of his workday at Victrola. . .

“Starbucks does not define the coffee conversation anymore,” Bullock said. “It is defined by independents like Victrola.

“Look at the baristas!” he continued, pointing to the intense women on the business side of the espresso machine. “This is a calling, what they do, like an old-school European barber. This is not pulling fries out of the vat when the thing beeps at you. With these old machines, you run the risk of variability in every cup. But sometimes you get art.”

Wow. I guess if you have time to sit around in a coffee shop all day and surf the internet then you can tell when a cup of coffee is “art” and when it’s just a cup of coffee. Hopefully, most of us will never know the difference.

For the full story, read: “Is Malaise Brewing at Starbucks?” – Washington Post.

6 Comments

  • Mark

    too funny, but what a luxury to have enough free time to blog about the people that have enough free time to analyze (or make up), the science (or art) of coffee making… :O)

  • Jada Bown Swanson

    Well having grown up where ‘brown water’ was considered coffee, then moved to Coffee Land aka Seattle, I totally can appreciate a great cup of coffee. And trust me it so is NOT Folgers, Sanka, Maxwell House, tin can variety cup of java.

    An even better cup is from Costa Rica, which I will be purchasing mass quantities of beans in about 6 weeks when we go. You guys don’t know what you are missing.

    Please tell me you don’t drink Folgers, Denny, please!!!!!!!!

    And no, trust me, I don’t have time to sit around blogging about coffee either, but if I am going to drink it, it is going to be good, not murky water, but sweet, aromatic flavorful goodness.

    Yes, I am Jada, a coffee addict. And if you visted our home one look at our main floor living quarters, you would totally be able to tell it.

    I no longer am a Starbucks follwer. For some really good American roasted coffee, you HAVE to try, http://www.vistaclaracoffee.com. A man from my former church owns this company, absolutely THE BEST hands down.

    Okay, back to my regulary scheduled routine at this time of day. What is that? Well, of course, I am off to make a double shot latte, of course!

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