The subject of today's post is Starbucks Coffee, namely how I am mad at them from a branding standpoint because while they continue to burn their coffee (thereby not fulfilling their original mission statement), they also insist on bringing new products to market like VIA, their new instant coffee which they are calling "ready brew," a sample of which I was handed a week or so ago.
Whew! That sentence was long! I also should explain the title of the post, which refers to the fact that when we moved back to LA, Jim Maloy told me that Peet's was better and that I should check it out, and it wasn't until I happened to observe that Peet's was two crosswalks closer in my neighborhood and gave it a chance that I realized how very right he was. So, there you go Jim. Save this post forever. You were right, man– Peet's is delicious. I don't know why it took me so long to come around.
Back to VIA. I first tried this product back in February when it was in "early release" because I happened to be in Seattle for business, and…. I mean, is it decent for instant coffee? Sure. But, once you've already accepted the fact that you have exactly one minute for coffee and not the ten or so it takes to make a whole pot or boil water for a French Press, who are you to be aiming higher than Folgers instant, which is also totally passable in an instant coffee way? How dare you? In fact, maybe my friend Angela will leave in the comments the name of that even more than passable brand of European instant coffee that we drank in Greece in the summer of 95, when we were on our "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" backpacking trip that also included sleeping by a lake in Avignon and some crazy existential discussions about "who am I, man?". That coffee was really good, and may have included a Greek ingredient like uozo or goat's balls. I don't know! It was still better than VIA, which is infinitely more expensive.
Anyhow, Starbucks VIA is another miss for me, like the Egg McMuffin-esque breakfast sandwich and the smoothie. Starbucks, when will you return to your core mission of just making excellent coffee? Why this further transgression? And also– if you choose to dabble in the world of instant, please (please!) do not then build a marketing campaign around asking people to do a "taste test". OMG! Even people with no taste buds can detect the strange, low expectation having after-snap of instant coffee, even if it does contain "essential coffee oils" and that is even when compared to the charred house blend being used as a basis. Dude! An old school taste test? Did we learn nothing from the debacle of New Coke?
In closing, Starbucks, this is the reason that more people like me are defecting to Peet's.
