Starbucks Coffee Shops

Starbucks Coffee Shops

Buying coffee is not as easy today as it once used to be. When was the last time you walked into your local corner bakery and ordered “a cup of coffee, please”? With Starbucks coffee shops springing up around the world faster than you can even say Starbucks coffee shops, ordering coffee today has become a complicated affair.

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” Tom Hank’s character hammers home this point nicely: “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making abilities whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, de-caf, low-fat, non-fat, etcetera. So, people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self.”

Starbucks coffee shops have become the new neighbourhood joint where it’s ‘see and be seen’. Everyone from your local hippies to your middle-school teachers to your Bay Street bankers are slowly becoming Starbucks regulars, finding it increasingly difficult to pull themselves out of the plush sofas and chairs that are laden in Starbucks coffee shops around the world.

But what is it exactly that keeps people coming back to Starbucks coffee shops time and time again? Is it really just the comfortable lounge chairs that people like to escape to? Or is there something more? Is it something in the coffee itself? Can Starbucks coffee really taste so much butter than your regular Dunkin’ Donuts coffee that it’s worth paying three times the price?

Coffee is America’s number one social drink, and Starbucks coffee shops are the country’s number one social hangout. As addictive as coffee is – and, indeed it is – Starbucks coffee shops are even more so. The music, the aromas, the sofas, the lighting, the people – Starbucks coffee shops reek of chic.

Coffee has not always been so trendy. Ask your grandfather and he will surely tell you tales of coffee being an ‘old fashioned’ drink, meant mainly for the common Joe. Today, Starbucks coffee shops have helped reverse that idea. Coffee may still be common – in the world commodity market, it is second only to oil – but Starbucks coffee shops have made coffee chic.

It doesn’t stop there. From equipping themselves with wireless Internet, to offering coffee-related accessories in store, to even having their own roasteries, Starbucks coffee shops are taking whatever steps are necessary to capitalize on their success. And, it seems to be working; today, there are over 10,000 Starbucks coffee shops in over 30 countries around the world.

So, go on, order a medium de-caf cappuccino, or a small non-fat caffe latte, or a large lactose-free mochacinno. It doesn’t really matter what drink you decide to purchase from any of the Starbucks coffee shops that are surely on every other block in your vicinity. After all, every drink is a Starbucks drink, and that is what you’re really paying for.