To no longer enjoy going to starbucks, costa or cafe nero?

[slownova]

I was in town early this morning as I was at the Gym and then had to pick up on item from a shop that wasn't open until 9.30am. Years ago I used to love popping into starbucks or costa for tea and a bit of cake but I had a look in both and the cakes just looked a bit grim to me. In the end I just wondered round till the shop I wanted opened and then I went up the road to have a nice pot of tea and a homemade scone.

I still enjoy going to a nicer café with home baking and good quality tea but the appeal of places like starbucks, Nero and Costa as totally evaporated for me. I used to love getting some seasonal pumpkin loaf or ginger bread with thick buttercream icing or some kind of gingerbread / black cherry / peppermint hot chocolate but I just don't like it anymore. I also can no longer stomach hot chocolate and a cake and would have tea and cake or a hot chocolate preferably a dark chocolate one on it's own.

I do still sometimes go to costa etc if I'm meeting a friend or with my niece and there isn't anywhere else to go and sit but all the glamour it gone.

Why is that? Am I just getting old? My teenage niece still loves to go to Starbucks. I find it so expensive for what you get and the cakes aren't nice and I can make much nicer at home myself and I have better loose leaf tea which I can break out if I want a treat.

Yes I read that this morning, and I’m not surprised, people are waking up to what a rip off it is, and how awful the coffee and food are.
I live in a town packed full of coffee shops, lots of them independent, but if I want to go to a cafe that’s clean, good coffee , good value, and decent toilet facilities, I either go to Waitrose or M&S.

They're all run with minimal staff which means it's really slow to get served and the places are often filthy with lots of table needing to be cleared. Starbucks coffee is dire.

Many years ago, there was a fascinating (for some 😀) Open University documentary (I think it was part of a Business Studies course) on the rise of Costa and Starbucks.

They noted that the ethos of Starbucks was to be a "tween" place. That is between home and work. And that this started catching on just as Whitbread had to lose a load of pubs due to the monopolies commission report.

This was late 90s ?

The UK invented the coffee shop as we know it today.

Depends where you go and I must have tea with cake. 😋

All these things in retail go in cycles. Lots of younger people don't seem to drink coffee and tea. There are perhaps more independent places now - the market is saturated.

I like the coffee in Costa - I think Starbucks coffee is terribly weak and I find Nero coffee too bitter. The food in Costa has always been awful for the price but I do enjoy a seasonal beverage. I usually get take away though - they aren’t nice places to sit; they were never particularly clean but now that they have started allowing dogs they really do feel pretty grubby

@FitatFifty I think my wee town was late in getting a costa and a starbucks. They are busy as they are all we have really especially earlier in the day. I'm sure we will also only get the new hip places in a few years just as they are running out of steam!

I wouldn't be seen dead in a Starbucks or Costa unless they were the only option (motorway, airport etc.). I hate everything about them, from the plastic lids to the awful coffee (Starbucks is way worse, blended to taste better as a shot in a big milky sweet drink, rather than actual coffee.)

Much rather support a local independent.

I only ever go to Costa at Xmas and in the summer hols as my class teacher (I'm a teaching assistant) gifts me a £10 voucher each time.
I get the afternoon deal for £4.99 which gets me a hot chocolate and a muffin for DS. I don't rate the cakes but he likes it.
I enjoy their hot chocolate but not enough to pay £4.50 of my own money.

After a series of - frankly disappointing - visits to Starbucks (which was next to Sainsburys and so convenient for a post-shop treat) we resorted to waiting till we got home, and using a De Longhi bean to cup machine to rustle up the perfect coffees along with a sweet treat from the bakery.

That was £17 a week saved.

And - now we have the machine - it seems coffee for lunch is the norm ... (having recently tried the Forza coffee beans from L'Or ☕)

They've always been horrible.

@MasterBeth All very well if you have an independent, unfortunately I don't unless you include chez slownova!

Weirdly, in the 50s, coffee was very much a teenage thing.

I mean who can forget Cliff Richard in "Espresso Bongo" ?

And of course Lloyds of London was a coffee shop long before they discovered the magic of money.

I mean that last bit is bullshit. The "third place" notion comes directly from the American corporate ambition for Starbucks which noted that US society didn't have an equivalent of the Italian cafe (or UK pub) where you could just hang out with a drink. US diners and fast food prioritised quick turnover of tables - fill yourself up and go.

Comfy chairs and sofas were innovative for a US chain. Whitbread transported the concept here wholesale

Well at least that's tonight's viewing sorted!😂

Well, OK, but you don't have to visit any coffee shops at all if you don't want to.

(I don't think Starbucks etc. have necessarily got worse. Other places have raised their game and Starbucks/Costa look tired in comparison, and no longer new or unusual.)

Costa has been awful for years. Their coffee always tastes burnt to me and I absolutely despise parting with the best part of a fiver for something so rank.
Starbucks tends to be better quality but they are tax dodgers so no thank you.
Nero is fine, but again, expensive.
And I'd never consider going to any for cake. Eurgh.

@MasterBeth True but it would be nice to have a place to go which was decent but we just don't have them here. I don't drink so I don't much enjoy pubs. I am sure costa used to be a bit nicer than it is now.

I mean that last bit is bullshit.

The market began in Lloyd's Coffee House, owned by Edward Lloyd, on Tower Street in the City of London.[6] The first reference to it can be traced to the London Gazette in 1688

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_of_London#History

You are at least 250 years out.

Costa has been awful for years. Their coffee always tastes burnt to me

The documentary I mentioned upthread began with the person who has to buy coffee for Costa. It took them all over the world and several deals to be able to source the right coffee to be able to provide a consistent and acceptable blend.

Having haunted a shop called "Importers" in Ealing Broadway in the 80s that roasted coffee on the premises (including my then preferred "continental" blend), I do like my coffee. If cocaine powers finance, then coffee powers IT.

It's not the blend thats bad, its the roasting and subsequent boiling of the coffee.

I do love a Starbucks their white chocolate and caramel blondie is so nice. I don’t like costas coffee but their Mac & cheese is nice and their hot chocolates. I agree it’s really over priced xx

@SerendipityJane I was thinking about that as I was posting. In the post war era, when teenagers were a "new" thing, coffee was something different from what parents were drinking and there was none of the stigma there was around pubs. Back when spaghetti was new to Brits...

We've just come back from Italy (Turin) and I didn't see a single chain coffee shop anywhere, quick service, fantastic coffee for 1.30, lots of homemade pastries and cakes and mostly at seat service. Always a glass of water without having to ask too.

Like night and day compared to Starbucks etc.

I think it used to feel like an accessible treat in the days when it was cheaper and there weren't as many independent or at least classier places with better offerings.

But now it just feels like you're getting ripped off, you practically have to sell a kidney to get a rubbish coffee and a slab of cake made from poor quality ingredients which has probably been sitting behind the counter for several days.

I also wonder whether more people are becoming more aware of the consequences of eating too much sugar and UPFs, and when you make an effort to reduce the amount of sugar and crap food you eat, your palate changes and a huge slice of sickly sweet cake from Starbucks no longer seems that appealing.