h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This entry is completely unbalanced, as it misses some serious issues around Starbucks:

"Here's a breathtaking statistic: The $3 many Americans shell out every day for a latte at Starbucks is equivalent to the daily wage of a Central American coffee picker."

They also use genetically modified beans.

And much more - I'm not as informed as I'd like because we don't have starbucks in Australia

For more info search Google for "starbucks campaign"...

Let's make sure the corporations don't get any more free advertising.

Cheers,
Rob.

I don't know about that, but they can't make drinkable coffee

i'm not to say whether starbucks is good or bad, or the worst thing to ever happen, the purpose was not to examine the corporate ethics of a large company, but offer a guide to the menu. i would think that that sort of examination would be appropriate, but it just wasnt the purpose i was shooting for here.

I understand the point of the article... an analysis of the menu is fine.

I just think people deserve to know what the consequences of their *sampling* that menu might be...

Cheers,
Rob.

(actually, an analysis of the menu is not fine in my opinion, but we'll leave that decision to tptb - got to choose your battles)

True Coffee is expensive but so is NY rent. It costs them much more than $3 to bring coffee across the world and grind it up for you.
Like everything you buy you are funding an international importer by driving down prices at your local -lidl-walmart-tesco-7-11 you are asking him to pay the company that pays the coffee picker less.

It is impossible to blame any one company, like Coffee-Bucks. Where did your shoes come from where does the rice you eat come from where was your banana grown? If You do not buy the products then how can their economies be supported? We are all as guilty as the coffee drinkers but the real problem lies in corrupt officials and money grabbing export-import dealers. Perhaps the WTO could control this but many of the problems lie in the countries where the workers live.

Hell I don't even like coffee.

I have to agree, ignoring the ethical argument entirely, Starbucks make some of the harshest coffee I've ever tasted. Coffee that makes you feel sick and run around the ceiling at the same time cannot be good.
I speak as one who goes out of their way to test coffee houses as soon as they crop up to find out how good their coffee is.

Starbucks does for coffee what McDonalds does to burgers (and I mean real burgers). Luckily, it's not as easy to screw up coffee making as burger making (you can't add cow mush for example). However I think it's much better to support more local, independant coffe bars if you are lucky enough to have them, and you normally get a much better atmosphere in these places.

But then I do live in Islington.

I agree with the "support your local, family run, coffee bar." The quality is generally much better and I feel good about myself not supporting a huge corporation. I've got a little place near my home that's run by a Chinese family and I guess I'm one of the few Oriental customers they have, because every time I go in there they won't let me leave and keep bribing me with free food. yay!

*presently looking for confirmation that starbucks is owned by McD's*

*returns having found nothing supporting this theory other than they have similair marketing plans and business "ethic"*

I found out that mcd's french fries, contain beef extracts as does the vegetable oil that they fry it in! thanks to mcspotlight for pointing that out, and there's some very good stuff about the starbucks campaign at purefood.

*Nips out to the vegitarianism thread wondering how much the bbc would get in advertisng from starbucks if this thread appeared in the busiest conversations on the front page?*

Z.

Recently on the news here in Los Angeles was a story about fast food restaurants selling their used oil. apparently, most chains have a practice of only using the oil a certain number of times before discarding it. Some enterprising managers discovered that non-chain restaurants and fast food places don't have that practice and started selling old oil to them.

*topic drift*
You can use old veggie oil as a substitute fuel for diesel engines!
*Also agreeing with supporting local nonfranchised commercial outlets*
Z.

The price of the coffee is not the issue. Nor is new york rent. what worries me is slave labour and genetically modified foods...

but then as long as all the new yorkers have their lattes, who cares about the Columbian bean pickers?

The coffee probably would taste better if the pay and conditions of the workers were better, thereby encouraging a higher standard of work and resulting in a better product...

(socialist nutcase for a day) Rob.

Just so you know Starbucks is now in Australia - there's at least one in Sydney - with plans for many more.

The coffee sucks IMNSHO

;^)#

Why do you think salaries of bean pickers has anything to do with quality? Hitting them with sticks will probably improve the quality. If you refuse to drink starbucks then what will you drink? Where does your local coffee place get your coffee? Do you believe them? I suspect the Starbucks Coffee pickers are paid more than the Lavazza or Bargain Nescafe or the Premium Kenyan Roasted beans inna Paper Packet coffee pickers.

BTW... Did you know that Pret and Aroma are part owned by MC D...
&
Kenya : Advised to grow flowers for the dutch auctions at 70 cm long. When the flowers came in the foreign flower importers said No! now we want 80cm. So we will buy your flowers 1/2 price. Where do you buy your flowers from?

To be fair, Starbucks is participating in a program to pay coffee growers fair rates by bypassing the usual distributors - they sell the coffee specially labelled as "fairly traded." They are also doing some things to encourage growing beans in the forest without cutting down the trees. Maybe it's not enough, but it's more than Folgers or Maxwell House or the other big coffee producers do.

And whether the coffee is bad depends on what you are comparing it to. See the thread on the "Dark Days before Starbucks."

ok... lets see...

*the best cup of coffee that i ever bought from a coffee shop was from an independant place on the New Jersey shore. that place was great. However, if you've ever had the coffee at, say Denny's or any other fine american chain restaurant, you would thank your lucky stars if there was a starbucks nearby, trust me, i have.
*I've also had horrid, old, burnt coffee from some of these independant places, it varies from place to place, or even from employee to employee within that local shop.
*we all know that starbucks is the McD's of the coffee world, the entry says so, right?
*personally, i think that the drip coffee that starbucks serves is nasty. i dont drink it unless i am especially tired. also note, that starbucks will brew different types of coffee on different days, with no real rhyme or reason as to which one your gonna get. one day it could be a lighter coffee, another day it could be the Yukon blend (umm,Yukon, well, you know how coffee is usually a dark brown when ground? well, yukon is, well, jet black) go yukon!

Name the place! Name the place! Write an entry!

/* Has one foot out door, headed towards the Jersey shore */

Oh, fair trade coffee. That must be a good thing, right?

Not if Starbucks won't brew it in their stores...

"Alan Gulick, Starbucks' public affairs director, says the reason Starbucks does not serve fair trade as a daily brew is because 'the volume of fair trade coffee needed in not available.' Yet, according to Nina Luttinger, communications manager of TransFair USA, there is evidence to the contrary. She reports that in 1999 of the 60 million pounds of fair trade coffee produced globally only half sold on the fair trade market."

They do sell it as packaged coffee, but most of the coffee they use is in their brewed coffee. So really all they're doing is trying to pass themselves off as worker- and environmentally-friendly.

Seems they've duped a few around here, too.

it had never really occured to me to wonder if they were serving the fair trade stuff.... interesting...