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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7219458.stm

I’ll tell you why I don’t patronize Starbuck’s. I have a long list of reasons, starting with Bad Coffee. Coffee is not that hard to make. People have been doing it for a very long time.

So why does Starbuck’s get it wrong? They get it wrong because they use burned beans. If the bean is bad, the coffee will always be bad. You can brew a bad cup of coffee with good beans, but you can never brew a good cup of coffee with bad beans.

I know they are trying to emulate the Italian espresso – and they use the espresso coffee as the base for all their coffees, which is a bad idea, too. It’s a fine line between an espresso roast and burned. Starbuck’s coffee crosses that line.

See, there are stages to roasting coffee. The lightest coffee roasting stage requires excellent beans because the slightest variation is discernable. The lightest roast is called a Bianco Roast (also White, Butter, Yellow Roast), and the bean is a buttery yellow or pale color. Next is a cinnamon or light roast (also known as Half City, Light, and New England Roast), and the bean is heated to a maximum of 400ºF. The taste is sharp and acidic, and the coffee brewed will only be a pale brown. Next up the line is the American Roast (Also known as Breakfast, Brown, and Medium Roast) which is acidic, but still considered a light roast. Its maximum temperature is 435ºF. The oils haven’t come out yet, and the sugars in the bean are subdued by the acid. Then there’s the Full City Roast (Also known as just the City Roast, Light French, Light Viennese), where the acid and sugars are balanced, the bean is a medium color, and the oils are appearing. Chips of the bean will pop off at this stage, known as the “first crack”.. The maximum temperature is 445ºF. The Vienna Roast (also known as a Continental Roast, After Dinner, European, New Orleans) has more sugars and more oil and is slightly darker, but still a medium roast. It has the most aroma at this point. The maximum temperature is 455ºF. Given a choice, most Americans prefer a Full City or Vienna roast. Somewhere between a Full City Roast and a Vienna Roast, the bean begins to lose its origin characteristics and gain roast characteristics. If you want to experience the flavor of the origin and its particular characteristics, this is where the roasting should stop. After this, what you’re getting is the flavor of the roast more than the bean. Next up is the espresso roast. The aroma decreases, the bean is black and oily, the sugars caramelize, giving the coffee an intense flavor. The maximum temperature is 465ºF. The next stage is French Roast (also known as Full Roast, Italian), where the sugars fully caramelize, the acids decrease radically, the bean is very black and oily. The coffee starts to taste burned. The maximum temperature is 475ºF. The last stage is known as the Dark French Roast (also Dark Italian, Heavy, Noir Roast), the bean is black and dry, all oils have been roasted out, the sugars are just past caramelization, the acids are gone. It tastes slightly burned. The maximum temperature is 480ºF. The next stage is burned. From espresso to burned is just a few degrees difference. Starbuck’s coffee is the French/Italian/Dark French Roast and the coffee tastes burned the darker the roast is.

The darker the bean is roasted, the more inferior the bean can be. Consider it like a fine steak: Bianco roast is raw steak that’s been shown a flame to subdue it for your plate, but it hasn’t even had a chance to start browning, the cinnamon roast is barely heated and the outside isn’t even browned yet. It’s practically raw, but some people like it that way. The American Roast is the next step up, still mostly raw, but bordering on rare. The Full City Roast is like a steak well seared on the outside, and rare on the inside. The Vienna Roast is Medium rare (or medium well, depending upon the temperature range). The French Roast is well done. The Italian Roast is very well done, almost charcoaled. The next step is carbonized steak, if it weren’t so brittle, you could use it in place of pencil lead.

Oddly enough, in comparing steak and coffee, the people who love the darker roasts of coffee like the rarer steaks, and the people who like shoe leather steaks prefer the lighter roasts of coffee. I find that interesting, even if it is irrelevant to the topic.

Once we get past the bad coffee, we smack into Bad Service – when Starbuck’s first started, they boasted the best coffee, fast. I had friends who swore by Starbucks’ because they could get in, get their coffee and be on their way in under 2 minutes, even after waiting in line. That was great. But they slowed down.

When all you want is a cup of coffee, you don’t want it to take 20-30 minutes to order it, pay for it, and finally get it. And they don’t understand the concept of just plain coffee – they want you to specify all sorts of things – skinny, dolce, latte, mocha, frappuccino, cappucinno, misto, au lait, macchiato, and then all the different flavors – cinnamon, pumpkin, peppermint, watermelon (what? They don’t have watermelon flavored coffee yet?), etc. You go in, specify, “House Brew, black, unsweetened” and they grill you for 10 minutes on all those other flavors and things and try to sell you frozen cheesecake, too. I understand they have to offer you the “go withs”, but can they drop all the grilling for flavors and styles when you’ve already placed the coffee order?

From the time you place your order until you get your plain cup of coffee can take half an hour – no thanks. It’s just coffee, not a three course dinner.

Worse still, they demand your name when they take your order, but when they put the coffee up for people to pick up – they don’t call your name. They call out the type of coffee. And what if there are other people with the same coffee order? How will you know it’s yours and not someone else’s? What was the point in insisting on getting the person’s name if it isn’t going to be used? I’ve seen people hover uncertainly at the counter, wondering whose coffee it was and asking one another “Is it yours? Did you order before me? How long you been waiting?”

Their coffee isn’t good enough for that kind of hassle.

The cleanliness varies widely from store to store. I really shouldn’t hold that against the whole chain, but I do. When I walk in and see that the badly placed table with the creamer and sugars and coffee stirrers is covered in spills and crumpled napkins, and there’s suagr and spills on the floor around it, I know it’s sloppy customers who did that. But it’s the employees who let it stay that dirty. When unmanned tables are filled to overflowing with coffee cups, when the restroom is out of toilet paper, when the trash cans are spilling onto the floor, when there’s grime on the edges of the counters, when I can see that behind the counter is as dirty or dirtier than the front of the counter – I walk out. I won’t even bother to order in a place like that. And I’ve walked out of more Starbuck’s than any other coffee place.

There’s competition for Starbucks – places with better coffee served in a friendlier faster fashion among a higher standard of cleanliness. Best of all, many of these nice coffee shops aren’t chains. They’re locally owned, and may even be a shop attached to a local roaster. Double bonus! So I frequent them instead of Starbuck’s. The beans are well roasted, not burned to charcoal. The coffee is brewed well. They understand the words “house brew”, and their counters and food prep areas are clean. The employees recognize you at your second visit, and never forget you. After your 4th visit, they even remember your order if you keep ordering the same thing. If you’re like me and experiment around a bit, they don’t get the chance to do that. But I’ve seen them prepare someone’s order as they walk in the door and have it ready by the time they get to the counter.

I never saw that at a Starbuck’s, back when I was giving them lots of chances to become my preferred coffee shop.

Bad coffee, bad service, and dirty stores are the primary reasons I don’t buy my coffee from Starbuck’s anymore.