venti white chocolate mocha, please

Alas, there will be 600 fewer Starbucks in the universe. Do you live near one that will soon close? I have two that are about a mile from my house, and the one built just a few months ago was spared the axe. Naturally, the one spared is the one closer to the interstate and to other stores. The one axed is across the street from a grocery store, a drugstore, a Dairy Queen and a hospital.

"A 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel."

What is it? Only the most expensive drink at a Manhattan Starbucks.

I thought $5 was pretty costly...

(HT: Metafilter)

this morning's breakfast

I stopped for a rare treat today: breakfast from Starbucks. A cranberry bliss bar and a grande soy no-whip peppermint mocha (the fave drink of my guitar-strumming nephew-in-law). Pure deliciousness.

why do you go to Starbucks?

I go for the coffee. Some go for the experience.

she knows Starbucks

After we dropped off our oldest daughter at a friend's house, The Wife and I decided to pull into a Starbucks for a little treat.

My youngest daughter - who is not yet three years old, mind you - apparently knew what we were doing, for she screamed from the backseat, "I want coffee!"

What have we created?

free Starbucks

Oh, yeah. I'll be there.

Update: Missed it. Having to contend with a two-year-old and a puppy will do that to you.

free shirt from Starbucks

Between now and February 28, Starbucks is offering free T-shirts designed by Project Runway's Mychael Knight. You have to visit the site at 10:00 AM PST (1:00 PM EST), and the shirts are limited. Go here.

Review: a Starbucks breakfast

Since I've talked about the growing competition that Starbucks is creating in the breakfast food market, I decided to put my mouth where my money is - so to speak. (That doesn't sound quite right, does it?)

Yesterday morning when I left work, I decided to try a Starbucks breakfast by ordering two of their newest offerings: the cinnamon dolce latte, and an eggs florentine sandwich.

The sandwiches, sent frozen from centralized locations to the stores where they can be heated in ovens made specificaly for the sandwiches and nohing else, come in several varieties. I decided upon the sandwich that seemed to be the healthiest. After all, I can get an Egg McMuffin from Mickey D's with sausage and bacon already, so why not pick a sandwich that has something the fast food joints usually don't: leafy-green veggies.

The eggs florentine is made of one egg, havarti cheese, and baby spinach - all three ingredients are tucked between two halves of an english muffin. It sells for $2.95, like all the breakfast sandwiches. The muffin was as crispy as I wanted it to be. While the egg was fairly flavorless by itself (and what can one expect? The sandwiches are not made to order), the harvati cheese was a great complement. The only disatisfaction was that there were only two spinach leaves in the sandwich. Why be so skimpy? It's $2.95, for crying out loud - gimme spinach! The latte was perfect. Not too sweet, just the right amount of cinnamon...

Were you aware? There's a site that focuses on news and info about Starbucks, describing itself as a site "monitoring America's favorite drug dealer."

Ed Levine has nothing nice to say about the sandwiches.


(Photo by Ted S. Warren/AP file)

egg-and-cheese wars

Mmmm. Looks like breakfast is the meal that many food franchises are focusing on, and Starbucks is joining in. After all, if you can't make money off commuters, students, and moms-who-just-dropped-their-kids-off-at-school out there, who can you make money off of?

Let's take a glance over the article, 'kay?

Last Wednesday at a Starbucks in Times Square, Katie Voss, a nursing student, was drinking one of the chain’s new coffee creations, a cinnamon-flavored low-fat latte. Ms. Voss, who was visiting from Maryland, said she visits Starbucks every day — up to three times a day, in fact — but rarely eats anything.

“I’ve been burned too many times by that pastry case,” she said.

Neither of the whole-grain, trans-fat-free pastries — a cinnamon loaf and a banana muffin — that Starbucks introduced that day were sufficiently alluring to change her mind.

“I try to fill up on coffee here,” she said, “so I won’t be tempted to get an Egg McMuffin before lunch.”

Right away I'm thinking: she's a nursing student, and she can afford to get Starbucks coffee up to three times daily? And, Ms. Voss apparently has eaten countless pastries in the past. How can she do this? Does she have a part-time job? If she does have a job on the side, you know it's off-campus somewhere, because campus job pay is notoriously low. If she only had Starbucks twice a week, think of all the money she'd save for other important college things, like keggers.

Starbucks has realized that it has historically offered only cold breakfast items, like muffins and scones and bars. Now, it's offering hot sandwiches - gussied-up Egg McMuffins, if you will.

The breakfast sandwiches, with upscale ingredients like peppered bacon and sun-dried tomatoes, are being gradually rolled out across the country as part of a concerted — and some say long overdue — effort by Starbucks to improve its food. “We are going to be all about premium and upscale ingredients, bold and layered flavors,” said Kathleen Kennedy, the chain’s recently hired director for food research and development.

You're going to be all about upscale prices to pay for those upscale ingredients, too. You may get some business execs to buy those sandwiches, but I can tell you that college students' tastebuds aren't especially developed (what else can explain all the Domino's Pizza boxes and empty cans of Milwaukee's Best?), so they aren't going to care if the tomatoes are sun-dried and the bacon has some pepper on it.

The bakery items are still produced at about 50 different bakeries, and shipped daily to the stores. Some items, especially seasonal ones like the wintry Cranberry Bliss bar and new ones like last week’s Five Fruit Banana muffins, are made in one or two locations, shipped frozen, and simply thawed before serving.

So that's where the bakery items come from. I'm still upset that the Cranberry Bliss bar is only offered the last two months of the year - who wants to join me in a petition?

cutting the fat at Starbucks

Starbucks is cutting the trans fat? That's good news!

They better never get rid of their cranberry bliss bars. In fact, they should offer them year-round! However, if they did, The Wife and I would probably eat so much it wouldn't matter if there was no trans fat.

Ooo! Someone has the recipe!

Can Starbucks bring happiness?

Apparently in Kandahar it can.

"I wait so eagerly for the coffee shop to open every evening so I can meet my friends," said one, Abdullah Shehwar. "It is so wonderfully quiet and only the educated come here. We can talk to our heart's content."

More.

Coffee houses as places to exchange thoughts and ideas. What an utterly old idea.

Ye Olde Coffee House

Mark Roberts visits Colonial Williamsburg and considers how Starbucks isn't such a new thing after all. Read about it here.

America: Land of the Coffee Snob

Are you a fan of Starbucks? Does your vehicle pull into the drive-through nearly every morning so you can get your fix of the House Blend?

As you can tell by the cars and SUV's in front of and behind you, you are not alone. Jerry Shriver of USA Today loves Starbucks, too, and he gives the House Blend four-and-a-half slurps out of five.

The site also features a survey, asking if you agree with Shriver on his choice of coffee. As of this writing, 8,220 people had voted, and 43% agreed that the House Blend is the best.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION: Brownie received no commercial support for providing this gratuitous mention of Starbucks, but he is accepting of all donations.