Starbucks is a well known, almost global coffee brand. This chain of coffee shops are fully company owned. The price of coffee per metric tonne is approximately £883 a tonne. So for coffee shop stores there is a very high profit margin to be made.
I was travelling on my way to Crawley and as i was in London Victoria i noticed a burger type van advertising Starbucks. I thought to myself i have been to Starbucks before lets see how they fare.
Firstly i was not impressed with the service here. There were 2 staff in the van, no customers in the queue, and dispite this it took me 2 minutes to get served.
I noticed the bin they were using was full up with some plastic rubbish. Certainly not inviting for regular customers or great first impressions here.
The display of my coffee money was in a take away Starbucks plastic cup. Anyway, the coffee was served nice and warm. What i did not like about the coffee is that nearly 10% of the coffee served was of unecessary froth. Certainly unhealthy.
Despite my health concerns of coffee as a mainstream and widespread coffee available in fast moving restaurants and brand outlets and also supermarkets. The price of the coffee sold is another important factor. I paid £2.40 here from Starbucks for a medium sized tall cappuccino in a plastic cup. Caffee Nero were selling there cappucino coffee inside Victoria station for £2.10 (without so much froth on top).
From what i have seen Starbucks do not have a loyalty card scheme like Caffe Nero and Greggs.
I have done some research on Starbucks food snacks ranging from Cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sandwiches, paninis. All products contain less than 5 grams of fiber. So all in all this range is likely to be expensive premium priced, and also very unhealthy. Most contain wheat and and gluten.
Take away coffee ground beans from Starbucks are available for customers to buy for use at home. Though again Arabica, Ethiopian coffee and others are available for sale £4 for approximately 100-200 grams of bagged unprocessed ground beans. The coffee can be grounded by staff if necessary.
These foreign coffees for some unknown reason are not sold direct to customers when drinking in store or for takeaway use. This in my opinion is the Macdonalds effect of standardising products.
Ok you want a coffee you get coffee. That is about as far as product knowledge and wide experience as the customer is going to get by visiting a Starbucks and other coffee stores a like.
Conclusion: Good for relaxed customers, though for the savvy and health concened avoid.
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Advantages: Heavenly taste, huge range of coffee (incl. soya milk varieties) and an atmosphere that oozes cool and sophistication Disadvantages: Can get packed in there, the foreign staff sometimes have a hard time conversing, and you need to be a millionaire to go regularly
Lara_King 09.02.2001 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Starbucks (London)
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Jan 9th, 2008
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