Starbucks (aka Charbucks Fourbucks) changes

brntorng

2,500+ Posts
Starbucks has announced some fundamental changes that should be interesting to see:
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The story.

NEW MASTRENA ESPRESSO MACHINES

For better crema and to let customers, baristas see each other better

NEW EVERYDAY DRIP COFFEE

A "transformational" new blend, Pike Place Roast, in both regular and decaf

CUSTOMER LOYALTY BENEFITS

Free extras on drinks, free refills and free drinks with a beans buy

RETURN TO IN-STORE BEAN GRINDING

The aroma has been missing since sealed grounds were introduced years ago

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A new drip blend is much needed. Will be interesting to see if it's really better. And it's shocking that a business like Starbucks has been using preground coffee. That explains a lot since fresh ground beans is part of Coffee 101. The Clover machine is pretty cool. It's basically an automated French press. For $7 you can buy your own French press, though.
 
The Clover machine is for the high-end coffee purist. It's a really cool machine and makes a GREAT cup of coffee. The best part about it is that you can get a cup of coffee from any variety we sell. So, if you want to try those high-end coffees that go for $17/half pound you can try a cup fo $3-$4.
I'm not sure if these changes will completely turn out business around but they are a move in the right direction.

We went to pre-ground drip coffee in sealed individual bags ~5-6 years ago in the interest of "efficiency". We are now making the right move back to a more pure coffee experience.

Pike Place Roast is very
good although it's a more traditional dark roast so if you are a fan of Breakfast Blend then this won't be your cup 'o joe.
 
Starbucks only produces dark roasts under that brand. The "lightest" dark roast we offer is the Breakfast Blend. Given the flavor profile we are working with is that of the Italian coffee shop which specializes in dark roasts I doubt you'll see us sell anything but a dark roast in the future.

Speaking of Breakfast Blend, you mentioned that was your favorite SBUX coffee. I'm assuming from that and your "Charbucks" nickname that you prefer much lighter roasts. Do you actually prefer a cinnamon roast? That's the flavor profile of Seattle's Best Coffee, another brand of ours. The cinnamon roast tends to be a more bland coffee, IMHO. By only roasting the coffee to the 1st "pop" (rather than the 2nd "pop" in a dark roast) the fragrance and oil of the bean are not drawn out as much.

The cinnamon roast is also the level that your Folgers, Maxwell House and Nestle roast.

In a home roast are you able to attain a truly dark roast? I ask because to get to a dark roast Starbucks used to have fires literally weekly because the oils and gas the bean emit while roasting become combustible in the older roasters.

What is your favorite region of origin for the beans you roast?
 
Well, we have two threads going here. Will try to contain it to this one.

I've tried various Seattle's Best (my employer uses a couple of SB blends in the break room) and it's ghastly coffee. I literally can't drink it without having to grimace at the flavor. It's much more than the roast, it's the beans. But it's not burnt tasting, I'll give it that.

Most of my drip roasts are taken to the City to Full City range, 435F to 445F, and almost always short of second crack. This roast range generally causes the origin character to dominate which is what I'm looking for. Get into second crack and the roast level will increasingly dominate and I may as well be roasting cheap beans. My favorites tend to be Guatemalan, Kenyan, and Ethiopian (love the dominant blueberry present in a top Harar) although I've had outstanding results from just about everywhere--probably 50 different origins in the past few years. To get to that quality level I do buy the best beans I can find, most of them from Sweet Marias.

As you can tell, my taste spans a fairly wide range of dominant flavors. I'm primarily after the variety of flavors available in excellent single origin beans, not necessarily a particular character. It just has to be an excellent sample of the region. I will also acknowledge that there are different schools of thought on roasting profiles and the results that can be obtained. Starbucks tends toward the roast-dominated profile which many people like and I can tolerate. I tend toward origin-dominated profiles to achieve the kind of variety available in wine. It's largely a matter of preference. Since Starbucks has popularized dark roasts many people use it as their point of reference for fine coffee...until they try one of my home roasts.
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Yes, I can get to a Vienna or French roast and do it all the time for my espresso blends. Haven't had a fire, yet, but I keep a very close eye on the bean temperature.

I have to laugh about the Starbucks roaster fires because, frankly, it doesn't surprise me at all. How do you think Charbucks got its name?
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OK...in the other thread I mentioned that Breakfast Blend was produced for a certain market after the purchase of a certain company. That company is Coffee Connection and the market is Boston. Knowing that is it a surprise that George Howell has a preference for lighter roasts that are so prevelant in the US roasters? Like a wine semallier, his tastes are refined to a certain profile. Similarly, our green coffee department have similarly trained tastes. This ensures that even though the beans change annually, our Kenya coffee remains consistent each year.

As Mr. Howell stated, it has nothing to do with the beans but rather the roast itself. His previous company and current offering appeal to that profile. I'd strongly disagree with Mr. Howell's suggestion that the lighter roast actually gives you a stronger flavor.

It should be noted that Starbucks is not the only company that focuses on a dark roast. Other chains like Pete's, Caribbou and Tully's also boast a pure dark roast coffee lineup. In fact, even the big boys of Folgers, Nestle and Maxwell House have begun producing a dark roast in recent years.

He is correct that the Clover generally makes a better cup of coffee. I had a lengthy conversation with an SBUX exec who has been with us for well over 20 years. This exec is one of the most passionate partners we have, especially when it comes to coffee. He described the Clover as extracting the concentrated "heart" of the flavor of the bean. Think of it like a medium rare steak where the best bite is usually dead center of the steak. In this case the Clover extracts the best taste from the coffee. It takes twice as much coffee per cup as our drip methods and our proportion standards have always been heavier on the coffee compared to industry standards.

I was wondering what would happen to the other customers of Coffee Equipment Int'l. It should be noted that the founder of this company actually used to work for Starbucks before leaving to found this company.

It will never be the type of machine you'll see in all our stores though. I'm thinking only the urban stores with a lot of space will get this machine. Given the ~2 minutes it takes to produce a cup of coffee I also wonder if SBUX will need a separate line for customers that prefer this to avoid the customer service nightmare of even making our lines longer.
 
Seattle Husker, no disagreement with anything you said. I didn't quite get the "stronger flavor" quote, either. It may have been a misunderstanding by the reporter. "Stronger" can mean so many different things that it's meaningless.

No doubt Peet's initially and later Starbucks and others have popularized dark roasts in the US. Heck, the Italians have been doing it that way for a loooong time. There's nothing inherently wrong with dark roasts. It's all just personal preference. BTW, since I suspect most of Starbucks' business is probably derived from espresso drinks they're in good shape with their dark roasts for that market segment.

You do touch on an interesting point regarding consistency. Large roasters are forced to continuously reblend their beans to maintain consistent flavor from crop to crop. Out of necessity, they are forced to minimize--i.e., blend out--the uniqueness found in individual lots or their product would become unpredictable and consumers would be disappointed. On the other hand, operators like Sweet Maria's and small boutique roasters are able to select individual lots of coffee for their exceptional quality and uniqueness and market it accordingly. Since such lots are very limited in number it's impossible for large roasters to offer them. That's understandable since coffee quality follows a Gaussian distribution like most things. They have to trend toward the center of the distribution due to volume requirements, not the tail of the curve where the truly outstanding coffee is. It's the same challenge McDonald's and other large chains have. If you want a mediocre burger that tastes exactly like the one you had last year in a different city, you go to McDonald's or some other larger burger chain. If you want a truly exceptional burger you seek out a top-notch local joint that can offer something more unique and delicious. Also, by roasting darker it's easier to achieve consistency since the roast profile dominates, not the origin and bean character. For many roasters that also means being able to use cheaper beans since they're just going to burn them anyway.

I was curious whether Starbucks will continue to offer the Clover to other coffee shops, too. Definitely takes a competitive advantage away from those shops either way.
 
Thanks for the correction on the Pete's spelling. I should point out that the founder of Pete's was also a Starbucks co-founder with Howard Shultz. They had a differing opinion on how quickly to expand early on which resulted in him leaving. So, it's understandable that Pete's would offer a similar flavor profile to SBUX.

To be honest, I enjoy the independent coffee roasters also. Starbucks is not the end all be all of coffee consumption and Howard Schultz would be the first to say that. It was on a trip to NY City that he discovered the Clover at a competitor and wondered how they could sell a $7 cup of coffee. We have coffee tastings in damn near every meeting we have. At a minimum I'm sitting through 3-4/week and usually there is a food pairing with the coffee. We try a lot of competitors coffees in these tasting to get an appreciation to compare/contrast them against each other.

The issue of being a large roaster with 4 (soon to be 5) roasting plants around the world is a hot topic at SBUX. We are trying to find a way to being able to take advantage of special coffees that we can only get in small amounts even if we can only offer that coffee in small markets. This is especially important as we move from 15,000 stores to 30,000 stores. For example, if we can only get enough beans for an extra special coffee to supply 100 stores then we still need to do it. In the past we've had to turn away those coffees or use them in a blend in some way. With that said, you still aren't that likely to see anything other than a dark roast of those beans.
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Does this latest development mean that Starbucks is going to buy up every possible good bean and continue to burn the crap out of it? Por favor! Digame no!

QUESTION: Is Starbucks coming to Buenos Aires / Argentina?

Q 2: If "yes", WHEN?
 
Seattle Husker, this is a very sad day, indeed. Just the thought of all those wonderful beans going up in smoke is devastating. You need to convince the powers that be at Starbucks to "Save the Beans!" and forego dark roasting (except for espresso). I'm counting on you...
 
I'm a BIG dark chocolate fan. And similar to coffee, chocolates can have varying tastes depending on where they are from.

My favorite standard (when living in LA) is a dark chocolate sold at Trader Joe's. It comes from Ecuador. You can see this in a yellow square on the wrapper.

There is a bar from the exact same company with everything the same except for an orange square that says Venezuela.

I did a taste test and the slight bitter difference of the Ecuadorean chocolate was more to my liking.

Now HERSHEY'S or GHIRIDELLI'S would NEVER put out similar, but regional chocolates. I understand why. But just as I avoid them, I avoid dark roasting the flavor out of coffee.

But my sister KILLS for the standard burnt stuff. You've got a customer for life there.
 
I don't like Starbucks very much and for about the price of a small Mocha-frappa-reah or whatever, I can get a whole bag of this fine stuff :




I get the whole bean and grind it myself. If you put enough milk in it you can barely taste how bitter it is. I go with a 60:40 ratio of coffee to milk and am enjoying some right now.


Whenever I am
forced to go to a Starbucks I refuse to use any of their lingo when I order (I'll take a large coffee, please.) and then I make it a point to stare down the inevitable squirrely guy who is peering at me disapprovingly from behind his laptop.

This contributes very little to the intent of the post, of course, but at least now everyone knows I am very manly with bad taste.
 
I don't know that much about Eight O'Clock coffee but I have seen that it's been awarded a Best Buy by Consumer Reports the past several years. Take that for what its worth because I'm not a fan of Consumer Reports.
 
Consumer Reports also gave McDonald's the "Best Buy" for coffee which left me thinking
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?

I bought the "best buy" vacuum cleaner. The Kenmore vacuum is a tank that is heavy as a ************ and my wife strongly feels it's much worse than the Hoover WindTunnel it replaced.

So, my opinion of Consumer Reports is that either I value very different qualities in products than they do or they simply suck.
 
Call me a snob but the same people that have purchased coffee from McDonalds until recently are the same people that couldn't tell the difference between arabica and the much cheaper and lower grade robusta coffee beans. To each their own.

That's like saying all wine grapes are equal.
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Now, I'm not familiar with the Argentine appreciation for coffee but if the McD's has the best coffee available then that might be the reason that Starbucks has yet to open a store in that country compared to a half dozen other Latin American market which we have stores.
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brntorng-

I had a chance to try the Pike Place Roast this week. We had a large tasting here at the corporate office. There is a small roaster on display in the building but this blend is too delicate and the roast too complicated to use it so the coffee was roasted at one of our plants then driven here for the tasting. I have to say, I was quite impressed. As you can expect, the flavor was bold but yet smooth. It was less dense on the pallate than most of our coffees and lacked any bitter aftertaste. When asked the origin of the beans used in the blend I was informed it was a trade secret. We started with 35 different blends chosen by the coffee department before winnowing them down to this blend.

It will be rolled out to our stores next Tuesday and it won't be prepackaged but rather scooped for customers. This is part of the effort to get back to our roots when we openly displayed the beans in the store.
 
I'll have to stop by and try a cup. If Starbucks actually starts to serve a good cup of coffee I may have to find someone else to pick on.
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Well, I gave Pike Place Roast a try. It was, after all, free today and I'm not one to spend money at Starbucks. My timing was good. They had just finished a new pot so my free sample was hot and fresh.

On a scale of 1 to 10 with cheap mass marketed pre-ground canned grocery store coffee a 1 and the best coffee I've tasted a 10, it ranks at a 5. It's drinkable like most every day coffees from the corner gas station. Not as good as McDonald's which I would rank a 6. It's not as burnt tasting as most Starbucks roasts, but it has a bitter aftertaste that is very distracting and unappealing. Not smooth at all. No sweetness. No high notes. Fortunately, the bitterness doesn't linger on the palate for more than a few minutes.

I started my day with a Guatemalan home roast that was excellent, about a 9.5. The Pike Place Roast isn't in the same league as my home roasts using Sweet Maria's beans. My worst home roast ranks about an 8. I'm actually very disappointed Starbucks didn't produce a winner because it would be nice to have a reliable source for a good cup of coffee away from home.
 

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