You know, you gotta hand it to Starbucks; You may not like their coffee, you may think it’s over-priced, some say bitter but hey, just look at how they’ve grown! According to Wikipedia, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 23,305 stores in 65 countries and territories, including 13,049 in the United States, 1,909 in China, 1,555 in Canada, 1,089 in Japan and 927 in the United Kingdom.
The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 30, 1971, by three partners who met while they were students at the University of San Francisco: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting beans. Originally the company was to be called Pequod, after a whaling ship from Moby-Dick, but this name was rejected by some of the co-founders. The company was instead named after the chief mate on the Pequod, Starbuck.
The first Starbucks cafe was located at 2000 Western Avenue from 1971–1976. This cafe was later moved to 1912 Pike Place Market; never to be relocated again. During this time, the company only sold roasted whole coffee beans and did not yet brew coffee to sell. The only brewed coffee served in the store were free samples. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet’s, then began buying directly from growers.
BUT WAIT, this blog post is about a wonderful invention. One, I personally find it to be a brilliant idea and every day I use it with my Grandé Americano. I’m referring to ……
Simplistic in design, ingenious in concept, readily available (except when they run out) (so I keep one in my handbag), inexpensive to produce and FREE to you and me!
Look Ma, No Spills!
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 
“You gotta hand it to Starbucks; You may not like their coffee, you may think it’s over-priced, some say bitter but hey just look at how they’ve grown.”
Oh, no! I feel a rant coming on.
I don’t like coffee, so I look at this with an “unfiltered” eye, so to speak. I’ve never understood why people pay money (in the case of Starbucks, the equivalent of a mortgage) to drink something so bitter. You have to pour in enough sugar to make you diabetic and enough milk to make you
fat“El Grande”. Why? Because caffeine is an addictive drug that jacks you up so you can get through yet another day of being ground down by our modern capitalist system. (Oh, yeah. It’s another one of those rants.)To me, coffee is a drink of the oppressed seeking an escape. Perhaps that’s because most coffee beans are picked by slaves, children and exploited workers. Nobody gets a “living wage” picking coffee. http://www.teaandcoffee.net/0102/special.htm
https://innerself.com/content/social-a-political/economy/8259-bitter-beans-coffee-child-slaves.html
As Starbucks customers sip their $7 coffee with about 3 beans worth of actual coffee in it, coffee farmers only get pennies for a KG bag of beans. Starbucks may, or may not, directly participate in slave picked coffee any longer. But either way, the conditions that made coffee a cheap commodity was an important element in their growth. Kinda like slavery helped build the American economy.
And (surprise!) I despise Starbucks itself…if for nothing other THAN their growth. They grow like a cancer. Coffee used to be about the small, independent, places, but is now dominated by a precious few mega-coporations. These fucking Starbucks are everywhere! I live in a one-horse Duckburg. Yet even here, there’s one Starbucks that you can see from the front door of another Starbucks. But considering you can’t throw a doughnut without hitting a Tim Horton’s, that’s really saying something. Tim Horton’s is a huge Canadian coffee chain that destroyed all competition here.
How can Starbucks enter such a monopolistic marketplace? I think it’s through creating a class divide. They’re stealing Tim Horton’s customers that no longer want to rub elbows with “the unwashed masses”. Customers who’d rather be around their “own kind”; the kind who can spend $30 every day on a muffin and a coffee that more closely resembles a milkshake. I think they refer to it as “the Starbucks experience”. I call it being coddled, insulated, and ripped off. Because If there’s one thing our society is in desperate need of these days, it’s yet another class based social divide.
The success of Starbucks up here is doubly irritating to a proud Canuck like me. Up until 40 years ago, Canada was a nation of civilized, British colonial, tea drinkers. Now, we’re jacked American colonials awash in US companies that think nothing of literally planting their flag on their newly conquered territories. I’m no shopper, but I could name at least 5 companies to arrive in the last 20 years that prominently featured American flags & iconography. Would anybody open a chain of stores in America called “Russian Apparel”? Hell no! There were recent demonstrations in the US against Wendy’s merging with Tim Horton’s and potentially moving the HQ to Canada….But as usual, I digress.
In short, coffee tastes bad and is unhealthy. And at the end of the day, Starbucks is just another massive corporation doing what all corporations do, filling pockets of the 1% while making society ever more dependant on them. Unfortunately, we’ve all be successfully “branded”.
Oh my! I should have expected my Canuck Curmudgeon to send a rant about coffee! Would it be helpful to mention that I also buy only Direct Trade coffee through such sites as Intellegentsia when I really have money to spend on coffee. Now now, sit back and have a cup of Chamomille tea!
Yeah, sorry about that. I just get in those kinda moods sometimes (Every day, surely?), especially when I see cases of corporate mind control being so widely absorbed and accepted, even by the best & brightest… (Shit, did I just hand out a compliment?) which isn’t exactly a high bar these days. (Whew, that was close.)
Yeah, Fair Trade is literally the only way to go and it’s slowly starting to spread to other products. At this point, it’s like Certified Organic. If it doesn’t have that label, you should assume every poison/exploitation under the sun was used in its production. As they say, “sausages & laws”…and now every product on the shelves.
I keep a bag of Fair Trade Organic coffee around the house for guests (Guests? Who do I think I’m fooling?) and try to get Fair Trade teas, as I am a tea totaler. That is, when I’m not obliterating myself on the hard stuff and plotting activities that would send my ass directly to Gitmo.
You are too funny! But you might want to cut back on the caffeine in tea and not get yourself too ramped up!
Great rreading your blog post