Tag Archives: Coffee

Starbucks customers know their coffee

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Starbucks X or Starbucks YOkay this is the obligatory coffee house post. Starbucks is betting its customers can’t tell fresh brewed from instant. Choose X or Y — the two are separated by gender apparently. Results could prove V, their space-age “VIA” instant product improves on Folgers, or W, their customers can’t tell good coffee from WORSE. I tried it.

Starbucks gave itself a break by putting its VIA instant, specially priced at $2.99 for three doses, against its ordinary brew, no Sidamo or Yirgacheffe for comparison. It’s probably the base they have stewing on the BUNN to caffeinate all their products. I couldn’t tell that from truck stop coffee. Good luck differentiating from that.

If Starbucks has set out to prove what Folgers never could, it’s proved what we already suspected. Starbucks has a lock on the best beans in the world, but its customers have been gorging themselves on the caramel whipped creme milkshakes and no longer know espresso from chocolate syrup. VIA will remind them of what coffee used to taste like at Duncan Doughnuts or the Waffle House. Bitter Americana.

July 5 protest Starbucks unfair labor

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The IWW Starbucks Workers Union has declared a Global Day of Action to protest Starbucks’ anti-union termination. According to their press release:

Coordinated Actions Across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America Could
Be Largest Ever Against Coffee Chain.

Grand Rapids , MI ( 06-30-2008 )- Union members and social activists are gearing up for what may be the largest, global coordinated action against Starbucks ever. Protesters will decry what they see as an epidemic of anti-union terminations by the world’s largest coffee chain. Starbucks and its CEO Howard Schultz have exhibited a pattern of firing outspoken union baristas ever since the advent of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) in 2004 and are demonstrating the same practice against the CNT union in Spain.

“On July 5th people around the world will show Starbucks that we, baristas along with our supporters, will have a voice and Starbucks discrimination and repression of our efforts will not go unchecked,” said Cole Dorsey, a fired Starbucks barista and a member of the SWU.

…Actions against Starbucks will take place in: Argentina, Chile, the British Isles, Italy, Japan, Norway, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, 4 cities in Spain, 6 cities in Germany. In the US: Phoenix, Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles.

Starbucks feeds your addiction.

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pictureWanna take it outside?
 
Starbucks. We strangle the little guy, keep the world price of coffee low, and sell it to you for 100 times more.
 
Caffein is a drug. In twenty years we’re going to get sued just like Philip Morris, in the meantime we’re going to make a killing, killing you, hehe.

Starbucks moves in across the street from competitors, saturates the local area with storefronts, and drives the mom & pops out of business. Starbucks employees get to call themselves “baristas,” a name Starbucks invented as if to lend legitimacy to the job. Basically drug pushers but they don’t get to keep the profits.

With a stranglehold on the coffee market, Starbucks can keep the price of coffee beans low, enriching themselves while ravaging the small economies where the beans are grown. As a result the smaller farms are absorbed by the large plantation owners.

Starbuck’s special blend, there’s blood in it.

Reprinted from Subvertize.com