To wonder what's so great about Starbucks?

[ACatCalledColin]

Every time I go in there, it's always overcrowded and there's nowhere to sit or if it's not crowded the tables are usually still filthy from previous customers and nobody's bothering to clear them up .

The coffee is okay but certainly not anything to write home about. I quite like their hot chocolate (especially with some caramel syrup) and frappes though. Unfortunately I always seem to get dragged in there by friends on shopping trips as they all seem to love it.

Even my 14 year old sister has started going there with friends after school and at weekends and they usually go for the coffee rather than the frappes. And she raves about Starbucks a lot these days too.

Do they hypnotize you into coming back for more of their dirty dishwater coffee? Are they trying to take over the world?

Starbucks is overrated but I quite like their small square cake things and pastrami sandwiches if I eat lunch there. I find staff in my work one to be quite rude/brusque but then I'm comparing to Caffe Nero who I love!

Have a Google and see some of the other nasty stuff they are into.

I have looked at their corporate social responsibility impact (along with numerous other comapnies) for work in the US in the past. There's plenty of bad but, on balance, probably less than average given their size. There's also a fair amount of good. It's complicated, hence I just said not so easily dismissed, rahter than claiming they were shining paragons of virtue. Small independent shops tend not to be that great on the whole (though huge variation) as many struggle to survive, so corner cutting quite common, but at least with them you don't have the issues that go hand-in-hand with multi-nationals.

I don't like their coffee but their same-same-same atmosphere in every store is nice.

Dirty dishwasher, yep, that is what their 'coffee" tastes like. We tried it once, threw it away, and never again. We figure the people who enjoy the flavoured coffee drinks are the ones who love starbucks.

Went there once to meet friends. The coffee was awful and all the tables were dirty. Would never go there again, people should try other smaller places. Don't agree that they get away with paying any tax too but that is the government's fault.

Should read "without paying tax".

mushy It's not always possible to go to smaller places - as been stated several times upthread, a couple of reasons of many why Starbucks is so successful is because there's so many branches and the long opening hours.