Starbucks makes consistently good espresso. The amount of times I had - "oh, this hipster cafe is number one in the area" to just go dump the coffee and dip into Starbucks - is very high.
But going back to the topic - the consistency of Starbucks and the inconsistency of coffee shops (even in places like NYC) is reminiscent of why we gravitated to repeatable designs that we see today.
The visually appealing websites, that are not hard to read is "Starbucks". Be it visually "extravagant"(TheVerge) or simple(Yahoo Finance) they are fairly standard... these follow time proven visual standards set out by printed magazine, books and newspapers.
This potato.cheap website is a pain to read. Hard to focus on the message and the text is way too clumped. So are many of the sites it lists as examples.
HN is barebones Starbucks, not a pointlessly overbearing hipster cafe.
The funny thing is Starbucks is by far the most expensive and crap quality coffee you can get most anywhere. "hipsterIndependentCafe" is consistently cheaper and better if you're a coffee snob.
Also people like me prefer to buy used as much as possible not to save money but to reduce waste. The romantics amongst us also prefer to have our goods well-storied