Re: Costa Coffee in Canada
 

Actually, it's not hard to be better than an independent. Coffee is not rocket science. There's no reason Starbucks should be any worse than an independent, and plenty of competitive reasons it should be better. It specialises in coffee (unlike Timmies) and although you get the odd duff cup (human error) it's generally good coffee. I think Starbucks has just become the new food chain whipping boy, as McDonald's used to be.

Re: Costa Coffee in Canada
 

My pal in Oz told me the coffee culture there is all espresso based, so drip coffee vendors like starbucks struggle.

I suspect the tax avoidance has pushed starbucks up the love-to-hate list...

Re: Costa Coffee in Canada
 

Starbucks is hardly dripped based coffee.

Re: Costa Coffee in Canada
 

Indeed - almost all Starbucks coffee drinks are espresso-based. The only one that isn't is filter coffee itself (and my understanding from barristas is that if you just ask for 'coffee', they're supposed to give an (espresso-based) Americano, not a filter).

Re: Costa Coffee in Canada
 

My dislike of starbucks- beyond the basic concept of buying coffee in a shop- is difficulties I had in buying a simple coffee therein.

Similarly, since I first went into a Tims and said the magic words I'd learned by rote, that would get you something like a coffee in a starbucks, and they just grinned and said "would you like a coffee?" I've been quite fond of TH.