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13 October 2008
Freinds don't let freinds....→[More:]...do Starbucks!
(saw that on a sign in a hole in the wall coffee shop in SF years ago)
Here's a totally irrelevant fact. My computer at work is called Palix. Has been for years. Now when I show up to work pre-coffee (very rare) or wake up from afternoon nap on the couch (very common), I see Palin, freak out, and scream like a girl.
hey, I like starbucks! There's one within walking distance from my apartment (a rarity in suburbia) and I hang out there every once in a while.
My home town didn't have a starbucks, so it's kind of precious to me. But the appeal is wearing off, as I come to know the area and barristas who make better lattes.
We had (thousands of) Starbucks here in Melbourne for a while... which always seemed really stupid. Every second shopfront here serves better coffee... and more importantly, we drink different coffee drinks. Nothing drip-based, and they can take their flavour-syrup crap and shove it. You can't really sell drip-filter coffee here, unless you're McDonalds - and to the average gumbie that's just what starbucks was: the McDonalds of coffee.
There still are 3 along Swanston St though - which are the ones I notice most. There was a great article about the futility of bringing Starbucks to Melbourne in The Age a few months ago - did you read it?
Yer, espresso. Melbourne has had large Italian and Greek populations since WWII so coffee is good. Coffees are short black (espresso), long black (Americano), cappuccino, latte, macchiato, 'Australia's own' flat white (with a dash of plain milk, not steamed like a macchiato), and iced. And that's usually it, although some shops do have the flavour syrups they're not really popular (and the bottles look old and grody).
Espresso all the way, yeah. If people want to drink drip filter coffee they can do that at home. Mine is a tall flat white, extra hot from Hudsons (it will be in about20 minutes, anyway). Starbucks stores here are going out of business faster than they can close the doors, although a few seem to do OK.
Espresso when at a cafe, percolator at home for this Melbournian. Never actually been into a Starbucks, and they seem to be rapidly disappearing now, so I probably never will.
I like Starbucks' frappucinos, but they were on the menu at my uni's cafe in Brisbane long before Starbucks came into the picture.
Competition in urban Australian coffee shops is about location and quality, not so much about the large, sugary, using-coffee-as-a-base-note-on-which-to-build-your-other-flavours-thing that Starbucks seem to push.
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