I don't understand why people like Starbucks so much. Their coffee is nasty and so is their food. But people are addicted to it. All my relatives have the app and spend like $50+ a week there.
Only reason I ever go is because I'm roadtripping at 6am and it's the only place open that early. The indie coffee shops don't open until 8am.
Honestly their forte is consistency. You'll damn near guaranteed to get the exact same cup of coffee/latte and sandwich in the middle of nowhere Arkansas as you are in downtown NYC.
I just wish that consistent flavor was something more than ash.
Not joking, that is essentially the strategy. It's very hard to get coffee beans from a hundred different farms to taste the same all over the world. That task gets much much easier if you simply burn them to a crisp so that all the varied flavor gets burned away.
Where are you that indie coffee shops aren't open at 6am? I just looked at all the coffee shops near me and they all open 6:30 or earlier except for one located inside a mall.
Boston. Indies open at 8am and close at 2pm. Starbucks is open like 6am-9pm. If I want a coffee at 3pm I am stuck with Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. Indies can't afford to be open an extra 7 hours where they are doing very little business.
Googling coffee open at 6am in Boston that are not Dunkin/Starbucks.
When I lived in a town of less than 20k in the middle of Nebraska, fuckin Nebraska, we had no less than 4 places open for coffee that early and that was over 15 years ago.
Tbh a lot of gas stations are using better coffee. A lot of people stop at Starbucks because it’s on the way to work, and they add caffeine, iirc, so their coffee is more addictive.