Like many red blooded American's I frequent food chains on a fairly regular basis, more regularly than I care to admit quite frankly. This allucution paints me as somewhat of a hypocrite. I hold a soapbox passion for the position of patronizing locally and family owned eateries and businesses in general, but lets face it, sometimes we just want the convience of what's right down the road. While Starbucks is "just down the road" from my house, its also just darned good!
As much as I would like to critisize the huge coffee chain for charging the equivilent of your child's college book fee's for a cup of coffee, or having so many stores that directions to get there involve saying its across the street from the "other Starbucks", or for so misconstruing the simplicity of small, medium, and large to such a degree that its the most comlpex part of placing your order (Venti-latin for 20), all of these things are so outshined by the fact that its just a darned good coffee shop.
Starbucks has been known to make quality of service and flavor one of its highest priorities. This concept is a difficult one to put into practice when consistency usually means sacrificing flavor, and quality for sameness (let's face it those Mcwhatevers don't really taste like anything). Its quite a feat for a chain as large as Starbucks to maintain both a consistent and really good product, not to mention superior service. To these ends Starbucks has made some pretty radical moves such as shutting down its stores nationwide for an entire afternoon to reintroduce its baristas and staff to what quality tastes like, and for impossing regulations on how many beverages a barista can prepare at a time. Limiting their menu to focus on the liquid consumables also plays a hand in assuring they don't get off the tasty coffee track. While they do offer a limite amount of baked goods they have these prepared out of house and only served in the store, allowing someone who makes a good cup of coffee to concentrate on making a good cup of coffee.
Have we talked about their quality of service? I could focus this entire opinion piece on that alone. I have never entered a starbucks stand alone store and been disapointed in my service. More times than not my expectations are exceeded. The staff are always cheerful and helpful. I belong to a book club that meets regularly in our local Starbucks. Many of the women aren't coffee drinkers and approach the counter with an almost lost in the wood's feeling about what to order. The barista is not only patient but 100% of the time was able to guide my friends to a drink that they enjoyed throughroughly. In addition to this they seem to genuinly love their job. I am told this is as a result of the company providing a good working environment and more benefits than other similar establishments. I would rather start my morning getting caffeine from a friendly Starbucks barista at twice the price of my ill mannered McCounterpart.
There are a lot of other reasons to love a Starbucks. I would encourage you to get your next cup of coffee there but lets face it, you probably already will. In some cases its more than conveince that gets your business and this is one of those cases. So instead, I will encourage you to do the same thing that Starbucks does around the holidays and that is pay for the car behind you. Don't worry about the cost, it will come back to you in frothy, caffinated goodness someday.
