The rap on Starbucks is that they "over-roast" or "incinerate" their beans.

And I think that might be right...sometimes at Starbucks, it seems like I'm drinking something brewed from charcoal briquettes...it doesn't taste good:(

Now, I will tell you that I am really no connoisseur of coffees...I like coffee, you know...a good dark roast, made with freshly roasted beans:)

But the beans don't have to come from a specific plant , grown on the southern side of a special hill in Columbia and then eaten and pooped out by a badger of some sort.

No, I just want a decent cup of coffee at a decent price:)

Why can't Starbucks do that?

I occasionally need to meet someone for business, and Starbucks comes up as meeting place (and I understand that...they are almost annoyingly ubiquitous:)

I have sat at a cafe table on a street corner in San Francisco, having a cup of coffee at a Starbucks...looking at the Starbucks across the street...Lewis Black calls it "the place where space and time folds in on itself"...I say "why build the Hadron Super Collider to open a black hole?"...Starbucks did it a decade ago with a combination of charred coffee beans and vats of money to open a Starbucks for every adult in the United States:)

In and of itself, that's no reason for a 2 star review...Gordon Gecko said it best..."Greed is Good!" and Starbucks exemplifies that credo...they are a generally very successful corporation grown up from the Bay area defectors from Peet's Coffee...I have no problem with success:)

No, my gripe with Starbucks is that they seem to be all about the marketing and not about the product...their coffee is crap:) So is most of the stuff they serve...it's second or third rate, at best.

And just because it's convenient doesn't mean we all need to stop in.

There is better coffee and better tea and better everything around...at much better prices...it's worth looking for another meeting spot:)