That was supposed to say, “any”.

Couldn’t have said aby of that better. I once had a soy green tea latte at a small coffee place by my house, and it couldn’t hold a candle to Starbucks (I’m not dissing them; I go there every day for their coffee and it’s tasty and kicks my ass awake). I have no problem giving SB my business because I heard (correct me if I’m wrong everyone) that aside from their Fair Trade coffees they provide health benefits to their employees. I also enjoy the option of buying really cool cds there.:D

Also, I don’t live in a part of the country where a local independent coffeehouse is really part of the landscape. We have diners, sure, and certainly I love a good cup of diner coffee, but it’s not always what I’m looking for. The “little guy” coffee shops that do exist are generally businesses that sprang up to ride the “coffee wave” in the wake of the Starbucks craze and make crappy, half-assed, stale coffee with a bad aftertaste but still charge 3 bucks for a latte. Besides, again, I LIKE Starbucks’ espresso drinks. And their brewed coffee is often strong and bitter, but the mellower blends of their brewed coffee are still much more to my taste than the thin, acidy brews that our “local chains” make. I really think this is a matter of personal taste moreso than the quality of Starbucks somehow being objectively lower than any given independent shop. I’m sure if you live in the Northwest or something, you probably feel differently, and I hope to get out there myself someday and caffeinate my way through Seattle and Portland in the name of “researching” where to find the best coffee. :)

(OK, I’m lying when I say there are NO good independent coffee shops around… there was one that I absolutely LOVED near my old workplace–though as a shit-stirrer I must point out that I really didn’t like their actual coffee any better than Starbucks’–but I am rarely anywhere the town that it’s in anymore so I really can’t go there these days.)

But if we’re going to do elaborate coffees, I’m with those who advocate finding an independent shop (preferably one that will let us use refillable mugs and uses fair trade coffees.) What I hold against Starbucks is less its middling-quality coffee than that it has largely created a luxury demand where only a moderate one was before, in the same way that DeBeers has convinced the world that the diamond=love. As with the readily-available and yet politically fraught diamond (slave labor, anyone?), Starbucks has built its demand largely by appealing to our basic snobbiness: terra-cotta tiles, logo mugs and gadgets (made in China), soft lighting, and a vocabulary of “baristas”, “ventis” “mistos” and so on. (On the rare occasion when I find myself in one, I’m that annoying person demanding “medium” at the top of her lungs.) Like diamonds, coffee is not a particularly harmless indulgence unless it is fair-trade and shade-grown: people cut rainforests, the lungs of the world, to plant coffee, and contribute to the ongoing extinction of multiple species. And while I can’t swear this is true of Starbucks, my local chain coffeshop won’t put their mocha into my refillable mug unless it’s their mug, claiming sanitation issues which somehow their mugs are spared. Riiiiiight.

So, I futilely urge us all: let’s not let the skim milk cloud our judgment. Starbuck’s is not about what’s good for us or what we really want, and they don’t really deserve our daily patronage.

Fun fact: according to Coffee Geek and other sites, a lower fat content actually makes for better foaming capability of your milk.

What gets me is that the calories in the milk aren’t as big a problem as the sugar that they put in. Most of the drinks are always way way too sweet for me…
Then again, I drink doppios. (two undilluted shots of espresso. I call it rocket fuel) or a shot in the dark. (Shot of espresso in a regular cup of joe) most of the time.

Their baked goods are too sweet, although, I do like their prepackaged shortbread cookies.