I have resolved to never again buy “points” of any kind, whether on an app or a game or a themepark or anything else. Either let me spend real money or I am going to assume it is a scam.
It’s only really a problem when you can’t buy the exact amount of points you need to make a purchase (which granted is most of the time). There’s legitimate reasons for using a “points” middle-man, though - for example, in a game where you can earn premium currency while playing, but also buy it; if you were making purchases directly, rather than buying the points you need, you wouldn’t be able to buy something using both earned and purchased currency; it’d be all or nothing.
This is definitely a very small minority, though, and 99 times out of 100, I agree with you, it’s a scam.
Except even then, they could just list both the real money cost and the in-game points cost. There’s no need for the points to be tied to the real money at all.
What if I want to buy something that costs 1000 points, which equates to $10, and I have 300 points in-game? I want to use those 300 points, but I want to cover the rest with $7 of real money. If they only list two costs - $10 or 1000 points - I can’t do that, but if they let me buy 700 points for $7, I can do it.
You don’t like buying 5% more points than you need for any purchase?
So, I’m a black coffee drinker. No sweetners, no creams, none of that garbage. Went one time to get me a cup of coffee from Starbucks. It tasted like shit. It was burnt. I thought it was just that one place, but nope, it’s every Starbucks place. Their coffee recipe is shit in and of itself, but they hide it under the ton of sugar and other shit they put in it. I never understood why people would kill for it. Also, why does a small cup of black coffee cost $2+?
Their coffee tastes the way it does because of how they roast it, it’s a purposeful style thing (that tastes terrible and is horribly overpriced imo).
Their roasts are also darker than they say. Everything they have is dark roast, with their ‘blond’ coming in closer to a medium.
People go nuts over the sugar, caffeine and perceived status, it has nothing to do with the taste of the coffee. As a fellow black coffee drinker, my recommendation is to avoid Starbucks unless you happen to be near a union store where the coffee is guaranteed to taste more like freedom, but still like ashes soaked in oil.
In case you want more details: The way coffee roasting works is you move beans around in a real hot container, and you try to keep them to a specific point on a temperature graph at each moment as they roast. A different roaster would roast them a bit slower, but Starbucks just blasts those beans with everything they have, then they don’t stop until the beans are burnt. This gives them their “signature taste”. This is largely because of Howard Shultz, the guy who drove the company to be a cafe, and until recently the CEO. That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.
That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.
I’m sure it’s also completely coincidental that burnt coffee tastes mostly same no matter where and when the beans came from. :-)
Also, why does a small cup of black coffee cost $2+
CEO needs another yacht, my dude.
Their black coffee isn’t great, but their espresso is good which is what makes it into the sugary drinks. I think the main draw is that it’s pretty consistently decent, while with other chains like Dunkin or Wawa you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get but it’s probably not going to be that good. I’ll also add that the coffee they sell at grocery stores isn’t bad (although it’s far from my favorite). I think it’s much worse at Starbucks itself because it inevitably ends up burnt pretty shortly after it’s brewed.
As far as price, it costs $2 because that’s the price that Starbucks determined maximizes profit. From what I’ve seen at other coffee shops though including Mom and Pop ones, that price point is pretty typical.
If you need drinkable brewed coffee from SB, you have to order the blonde roast. They scorch the everliving fuck out of their regular stuff to ensure consistency regardless of source, so even if you normally don’t, if you want “black” coffee from SB, you’ll be better off with the blonde. If you’re brewing by volume of grounds, lighter roast will have more caffeine anyway (they’re the same if you brew by weight).
Dark Roasted coffee is the only way Starbucks can be Starbucks.
Lighter-roasted coffee emphasizes origin flavors and i agree with you --generally tastes better and is more interesting.
But you can’t sell coffee like that in tens of thousands of coffee shops and have it remotely consistent.
Coffee growing from the same plot but on one side of a hill will taste different from the other side due to getting different quantities of sunlight. Complex origin flavors will always be the domain of small specialty coffee shops.
Starbucks has McDonalds-like consistency serving millions of customers a day and that’s only because they emphasize the flavors they can get consistently–roast flavors.
TL;DR The bigger the chain, the darker you have to roast. That’s just how coffee works.
Totally this.
Pretty much every chain cafe roasts their beans to an inch of their life, to give them a generic “coffee” flavour profile.Because god forbid coffee have even the slight variance of flavour.
To add to all this, if most of your customers are seriously there to taste their flavored syrups and milk of their favorite drink, you wouldn’t want to alter or even ruin that with unexpected, unique coffee flavors.
May as well add caffeine to a milkshake at that point …
Plenty of independent coffee shops sell Lotus energy drinks for this exact reason.
While the news is interesting, it is not about technology at all. Just because Starbucks has an app does not make this technology related news.
