Alexandersmap

    Tag: Starbucks

    • Morning Coffee

      The line for coffee in a hotel Starbucks is informative. We learn about the lives of others in cross line chatter between coworkers, learn who slept well and who was having a rough morning and we learn who in line has never ordered a Starbucks coffee before. The barista, seeing the confused looks, explains automatically that a Tall is a small and a Venti is a large, and I watch their eyes glaze over in confused despair. I think to myself that I’ve been ordering Starbucks for three centuries and I’ve never seen so many novices in one line before. It’s the arrogance of the familiar. I shift to helpfulness to expedite the ordering process that I may get a coffee before lunch.

      I write this next to a brand new Keurig machine in my hotel room, still with packing tape on it and never once plugged in. The hotel staff had stocked it with decaf coffee pods, which explains why it has never been used. If you’re going to use an in-room coffee-making system at all, make it matter. Some of us take our morning cuppa very seriously.

      It’s not about the coffee, really, but the ritual. It marks the beginning of the day, and importantly for this coffee snob, the start of the writing process. I’ve had to write without it before, but it’s nothing to celebrate. To reveal the extent of my love for coffee, I’m meeting people for breakfast at a local diner, where I’ll surely have more coffee. But it’s not stopping me from having this one first.

      We all have our routines and rituals. Those people in line used to pouring a cup of the hotel courtesy coffee had their morning routine turned upside down. I can understand the feeling of exasperation they were feeling as they ran into the strange world of Starbucks. We are, each of us, dealing with some challenging circumstances. Some are Tall, some Grande, and some are Venti. We’re all in this together friends.

    • Paradise in the Starbucks Drive-Thru

      I was waiting in a Starbucks drive-thru this morning and looking at the house behind it.  Before there was a Starbucks in this spot there was a Mobile station.  Before that?  Probably the yard of the house I was looking at.  Before that?  Probably farmland for a family that owned a larger plot of land in this corner of Haverhill.  Before that?  Probably a few generations of farmers.  And before that?  Perhaps the Duston family, who lived across the Little River, or another family that settled this land.  Before that?  Deep woodland that the Eastern Abanaki inhabited for centuries.

      I wonder now and then what the generations of people who lived on this land would think of it now.  Plunked down in the Starbucks parking lot, they’d be stunned to see the semicircle of cars lined up around the building as coffee addicts and Frappuccino posers each pulled up and completed their transactions.

      They call this part of Methuen Paradise Valley.  The valley today doesn’t measure up to the name.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s some lovely parts of Haverhill and Methuen.  But the spirit of the place, that intangible that prompted some folks a few generations back to name this place Paradise Valley is gone now.

      “Don’t it always seem to go
       That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
       They paved paradise
       And put up a parking lot.” – Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell

      Conservation and preservation are really the only way forward.  I hope people look up from their phones and lattes long enough to realize that.  Or maybe its just progress and I don’t see it.

    • On Coffee

      This morning I’m sipping a Starbucks Italian Roast coffee.  I could have chosen Peets or something else.  I’ve grown lazy in my coffee habit.  I have coffee beans and could have ground them using my hand grinder, poured them into a French press and savored the rich results.  Brewing coffee is a ritual.  Some days I’m into ritual.  Today I’m into having a cup of coffee in my hand in under a minute.

      Coffee probably came to New England sometime in the early 17th century, but New Englanders were tea drinkers like their cousins in the mother country.  Coffee didn’t really take off here until after the Boston Tea Party, when coffee became an anti-establishment beverage of choice.  Boston still wasn’t known as a coffee mecca though.  Coffee was something you sucked down to give you a boost or warm you up on a cold day.  And the choices were the same as in most of America – Folgers, Maxwell House, etc.

      Now anyone from Boston better mention Dunkin Donuts when talking about coffee.  Some of my earliest childhood memories were sitting at a Dunkin Donuts counter eating an Old Fashioned Donut.  Coffee memories with Dunkin started much later.  Back before the McDonalds lawsuit, I remember the coffee was scalding hot and you had to wait it out for a bit before you could safely drink it.  Being of questionable intelligence, I always tried to start drinking my coffee a bit sooner than I should have.  Since that lawsuit coffee seems to have throttled back on the temperatures.  Probably for the best but it does take some of the adventure out of the morning.  We all must be protected from ourselves.

      Like many people after college I started paying more attention to the stuff I ate and drank.  Beer was the first thing to get upgraded.  Coffee followed shortly after.  I know it’s sacrilege in New England, but to me Dunkin Donuts is like that K-Cup coffee.  It does the job, but it’s not something I’ll savor.  But savoring coffee wasn’t a thing around New England for the first half of my life.  It became a thing in the 90’s.

      Around Boston, Coffee Connection was our first exposure to a truly rich coffee experience.  It was a place you stopped in when you went to Harvard Square.  Then they started growing and you could find it elsewhere.  Coffee Connection peaked in the mid-90’s and then was acquired by Starbucks.

      Starbucks changed the way we looked at coffee.  It changed the way I looked at coffee.  The first time I had it was on a ferry between Seattle and the San Juan Islands.  I was in line to buy a coffee and when I got up to the front they had two kinds; “coffee” and “Starbucks”.  I remember asking “What’s Starbucks?”  The answer, “It’s like coffee but stronger.” still makes me smile.  Starbucks coffee is not just stronger coffee.  It’s more robust, more flavorful, richer coffee.

      Starbucks jump-started their presence in Boston when they acquired Coffee Connection.  And started a religious war in the process.  Starbucks vs. Dunks.  West vs. East.  Lakers vs. Celtics.  Flashy and expensive vs. working class.  Dunkin Donuts has seized on this in their ads, and customers followed suit.

      I’m an unapologetically diehard Starbucks fan.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll buy DD when I need to, and I love Peets and some of the local coffee houses that serve rich dark roast coffees.  Coffee, like beer, is something to savor.  And the growth of microbreweries coincided with the growth of the coffee industry.  But it’s not for everyone.  Just as InBev owns 45% of the American beer market, and MillerCoors owns the next 26%, Folgers and Maxwell House own the majority of market share in coffee.  Sometimes taste matters, sometimes people only care about the net result.