April 6, 2012 • 1:19 pm 0
there is a new $12,000 coffee apparatus at starbucks. it is intelligent. it thinks, weighs, measures, pushes and pulls out water. it, along with my friendly and knowledgeable barista, produced a “perfect” cup of 2/3 caf and 1/3 decaf sumatra. at almost $3 for a short cup, it inspires guilt. i am a good person. i really am.
Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, appreciation, barista, coffee, enjoyment, follow-up cup, hand-crafted, starbucks, coffee
August 11, 2011 • 10:47 pm 0
too many sizes
a nice man helped starbucks out. he found peeping tom equipment in the bathroom and downloaded the badness to his computer which was confiscated by the authorities after he reported it. they took his gear in order to apprehend the creepy crawly pervert who planted a recorder in the mens room.
so, the man says to starbucks, hey starbucks, please give me a computer i can use because the authorities have mine. remember? i helped you out. i helped you out even though one of your workers told me he was too busy when i discovered the foul spy gear. so starbucks is ignoring this man some more. it’s wrong.
i may boycott starbucks if this isn’t resolved swiftly. starbucks should pony up a laptop. it’s not like ten or more years ago when a laptop cost a million dollars. really.
it reminds me of when the world trade center fell down and terrified people were teeming uptown covered in crap. starbucks employees were charging the people for bottles of water. what were they thinking?
Filed under: coffee, lame!, starbucks, stupid things, water, coffee
January 6, 2011 • 10:05 am 0
i support starbucks’ decision to redesign their logo. i only wish there were no siren, as the siren bothers me. but given that this is how they want it, i like the new spacious, letterless look. i like that they are doing away with the huge “dated” mugs and replacing with more refined, upscale-seeming china. i hope they plan to provide china cups and saucers and not mugs. whatup with mugs anyway.
i hope they will follow my advice and get rid of all the other crap they sell there too. it’s like a bed, bath & beyond store. are they going to sell brooms and vacuum cleaners too? focus on the bean, that’s what i say.
my next question is: what will they do with all of the mugs?
answer: donate to people who don’ t have a mug, or who don’t have enough mugs.
i am sure: that there will be people who try to snatch these mugs up and hoard them, or sell them on ebay to other 90s starbucks mug hoarders.
to be sure: i love the idea of the walk-through store.
also: i want the short size to make its way back onto the menu.
but: i don’t have the energy to make a corporate-level complaint.
Filed under: cup, customer service, starbucks, coffee
August 26, 2010 • 10:12 am 0
August 26, 2010 • 10:09 am 0
i agree with the lady who refused to order a bagel “without butter or cheese” who was ejected from a ny starbucks shop. starbucks needs to understand that this is new york and that the default setting for bagels is not “with cheese” or “with butter.” if anything, and this is not the case, in new york the default setting would more likely involve cream cheese, capers and lox.
this is not to say that people who correct others’ grammar should not be sent to social re-education camps, wired and shocked any time they respond to their maladaptive impulse to verbalize criticisms, i mean corrections, of others’ communications.
please CLICK HERE to read the article.
Filed under: coffee, cream cheese, customer service, starbucks, coffee
January 23, 2010 • 1:34 pm 0
regarding their wish to be thought of as truly upscale, some time ago i advised starbucks to stop selling tedious food, games, stuffed animals, cheap espresso machines and other crap and stick to coffee. 
i suggested that a truly upscale cafe experience should include (1) a venue that is much more minimally designed, (2) the sale of unflavored coffee or espresso drinks only (i.e. no tea, cider or milk shakes posing as coffee drinks) (3) without the presence of such condiments as sugary syrup, sprinkles, powders or milk that is not from healthy, happy cows. just coffee. i suggested that charging more money for this experience would help consumers to feel that they were engaging in a truly upscale experience and would, over time, develop a consciousness centered in this kind of experience. the upscale consciousness. that is what starbucks was wanting when they introduced their upscale instant coffee. read about it here.
a few weeks ago i was looking for the tea lounge on seventh ave in da slope. why? my feeling is: their coffee is good enough, and i sought shelter from the cold and rain. i’d had enough of the malodorous basement religious activity that i had been doing with my partner but wanted to wait for her so we could walk home together. so i checked my palm centro and found that the seventh ave tea lounge had been closed. somewhat disheartened, i sought another alternative.
i found a place, but my internal coffee guidance system informed me that it was not acceptable. it had a brightly-lit, large glass showcase full of gleeful cookies and cakes; it was not the proper choice. i felt sad. despairing, i looked across the street and saw something worth investigating. it was: a cafe i had not seen before. it was called: cafe grumpy. or, in my mind, “grumpy’s.”
wifiless coffee spot
it was promising if only for the name. i was hoping for a moody, dimly-lit, reflective, leave-me-alone kind of place with ambient music or silence, no chatty park slope moms, strollers, healthy snacks or cell phones a-blazing.
i found a gorgeously minimal situation. excrutiatingly minimal. a single square wooden bar/table with one or two coffee drinkers drinking out of appropriate cup-and-saucer espresso vessels while diligently reading the new york times. i was excited.
until i saw the menu. and it was a menu, not just a chalkboard. there were exotic beans from here and there and espresso shots cost more than $3. i really just wanted a cup of coffee and was not in the mood for a “tasting” situation so i thanked them and left.
ironically, i was a little too grumpy to enjoy the pretentious minimalism of grumpy’s. that does not mean that i will not go back another day, perhaps on a mental health day, and drink too much espresso.
click here for news of grumpy’s imminent arrival
click here to see the finished venue (this one is in park slope but there are other locations. the “roastery” is located on meserole ave in greenpoint, where i lived in 1987 when it was a depressing hell hole of a neighborhood accessed only by a filthy, creaky, hot, infrequent-running L train*)
a good thing: striking interior
another good thing: no wifi
a bad thing: a disturbing, diverting focus on tea
another bad thing: the crema and foam of espresso drinks seem to be formed into cutesy heart shapes.
* regarding the l train of my greenpoint period (1987-90?), according to my research, the majority of trains that went into service in 1969 were not replaced until 2002-03. you think it’s uncomfortable when you get stuck in a non-air conditioned car in july? ha! that’s what it was like in every car, every day back in the day. today’s l trains are a ride in a bmw in comparison. i think this could be said of most other trains except for the a. it seemed to have good air conditioning even back in the day.
Filed under: cafe_grumpy, coffee, cup, espresso, hand-crafted, menu, precious, pretentiousness, regular, starbucks, stupid things, tasting, tea lounge, coffee
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