Costa is owned by whitbred back in blighty. With the market awash with coffee houses, both here and uk, very surprised that Tim Hortons is going to uk and Costa has come here, goes to show that they both think their product is superior, I personally like neither. In Canada I actually like a&w brew, in uk, I drink tea, but never from a coffee house as the water is never hot enough. Steeped tea here from TH is vile.

Whitbread Trophy Bitter. The pint that thinks it's a quart.

Just a normal day at the office

After seeing this I spent ages on Youtube watching NTNOCN. Still brilliant after all these years.

Yorkies have always been my favorite chocy bar

Whitbread Best - on of those Beers that you can sit there and sup all night long, get absolutely chuffing muntered on without realising it!!!

I've no real objection to people blowing their hard owned on coffee shops, but for God's saks stop walking round with that cup in your hand.

Have coffee at home.

Get the subway to work.

Have coffee at work.

It's not *#@ing hard, is it. FFS.

Coffee shops in Mississauga are dire to put it kindly, but saving me a small fortune though due to lack of consumption. Costa should do well here based on the coffee shops I have tried.

Tried Timmies dark roast, as all over the radio as Canadians love it, had to dump it in the nearest bin.

My office has a drip feed coffee machine, tried that on my first day and that ended up in the bin. But it is always ready to go and my colleagues live on it.

Tried Second cup, thinking it may be better, but alas could not finish it. Just watching the girl making it, heating/frothing the milk was meh, what killed it was the pouring of the milk. No love, just dump it in the coffee.

I have found Macca's to be a little more consistent but still not anything special. Still found the Australian Macca's to be better than what is served in Mississauga.

Not tried Starbucks in Canada, but they failed miserably in Australia, and was not a fan of them in the UK anyway.

Independent coffee shops are what Australians prefer. Mississauga I would like you to take note, but after living here for a few months, the foot traffic would be non existent.

I did like Cafe Nero and Pret in London, but after spending a number of years in Australia, who take coffee very seriously and take it to a new level. To become a barista you need to take a course. I have become what they now call a coffee snob!

Damn you Australia!

Returning to the UK for holiday's, I pass up my visit's to these coffee shops.

And then do not get me started on the tea, so far agree with @beckiwoo on this subject, then again it may also be the water quality as my cups seem to stain very quickly, but the taste is not the same.

Uh huh.

I thought the Aussie's just drank dingo piss?

Haha for some reason or another they are pretty cultured, well at least around coffee. Other beverages not so!

I found out the other day that years after closing down many of their branches in Aus because we know they're shit, Starbucks have just opened a branch near us. They've taken over another coffee house that wasn't ghastly but was better (it's not hard) than Starbucks. Be very interesting to see how they get on.

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.

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...

Starbucks is hardly dripped based coffee.

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).

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.