One thing I really like about Starbucks is they're doing to nice European coffee what Taco Bell did to Mexican food. It's a kind of transatlantic soft power play that is subtle but strong.
And this is... a good thing?
@ZachWeinersmith
What Taco Bell & Starbucks have in common is that they've convinced a couple generations of Americans that something (ersatz Mexican food & horrible burnt overpriced coffee) is representative of [food in Mexico / coffee in Europe] & I'm not really sure how I get anything at all positive out of that.
@ZachWeinersmith I'm old enough to remember a time before Starbucks was known outside of the PacNW. Let's wind the clock back to the mid-80s: There was a dramatic growth of small coffee shops, ready availability of many varieties of excellent coffee. I could find Kenya AA (my preferred variety in those days) pretty much whenever I wanted to pay for it. & in relative terms I payed a LOT less than I'd pay for a cup of Starbucks' burnt, inferior-grade coffee.
It's not a win.
@ZachWeinersmith By contrast Taco Bell's never been market-dominant enough to totally colonize tastes, and the deep penetration of Mexican immigrants into American culture (we have a nice bodega & three solid Mexican restaurants, all run by first generation immigrants, in my <10K population city in rural western NY) has made good Mexican food readily available to whoever wants it. Hell there's 15 varieties of tortilla at our local walmart.
@FeralRobots @ZachWeinersmith they've opened a chain of Taco Bells in the UK and the food is an order of magnitude more miserable than any of the pallid muck Britain became notorious for boiling to death in the 90s.
@ZachWeinersmith I don’t think this is true, though. Taco Bell is generally quite cheap. Starbucks is expensive for what it is. In Europe, the gap is even wider, with Taco Bell still cheap but Starbucks quite more expensive than any other alternative.
"Hold my beer" says England, looking at a nice Indian curry.
@ZachWeinersmith Hold on. European? Here in Europe we think it's American coffee. (Which is to say: hardly coffee at all.)
@ZachWeinersmith does Starbucks even exist outside airports in Europe?
@ZachWeinersmith to be honest, the "coffee shop culture" that Starbucks is the industrial version of comes from Australia rather than Europe.
Nobody used to drink those huge mostly milk drinks before Starbucks and others imported it.
@erwan IDK man. In Australia, Starbuck's main appeal is you can sit down and read a book, while almost all of Australian coffee shops will start to threateningly smile at you at 10 minutes mark and throw you out at 30.
Having said that, I found Australian coffee shop coffees really not as good as we like to think they are. The milk masking everything thing is real. The no coffee for you post 3pm thing is also real.