a) "Starbucks" serves in this situation as a generic term for an espresso drink of your choice. Like Kleenex or Xerox or what-have-you. When someone says "people will spend $4 on a coffee at Starbucks without thinking about it" they don't mean at Starbucks specifically, they just mean "some coffee shop that isn't 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds".

b) Even within the category of espresso-serving, $3ish coffee shops, the argument still applies. In a strange town (), in the absence of other reliable information, I will probably go to Starbucks because I know that I'll get a somewhat over-roasted, but drinkable, latte. If I walk into a random independent coffee shop, there's some chance I'll get an excellent cup of coffee. But, experience has also taught me that it's more likely that I'll get something that's no better, or frequently worse, than Starbucks. Similarly, if I'm out of saline or need some allergy medicine while traveling, I'm likely to grab it at Walmart, because all their stores are laid out the same and I can find what I need blindfolded. There is value in predictability in many situations.

() caveat that this applies to travel in the US, and generally for work. In various European countries, I'd bet on the random local shop. And if I'm traveling on vacation, there's value in experiencing something new and local. But, if I just want my morning coffee on the way in to the office, easy and predicable wins.

In the absence of reliable information in a strange town I will always gamble on a the small cafe, as they have to work to get customers as opposed to depend on an advertising budget and novelty style sugary drinks.

Now I live in London, and as far as I can tell, all the good coffee is made by Aussies, so I can only imagine how terrible Starbucks is by comparison in your country.

In New York, Swedish coffee (of all things) seems to be the up-and-coming thing:

http://www.fikanyc.com/about

http://www.konditorinyc.com/

No idea why. Scandinavia is exotic and hip these days, probably. Then again, a lot of new Swedish things are popping up, like Swedish pizza places (which, if you haven't had it, mostly revolves around unexpected toppings such as banana, cabbage and kebab meat).

Anyway, one reason Swedish coffee culture might be something that can be noticed in NY is that we're pretty good at drinking coffee.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coffee_con...; to get a hint about how important coffee is in Scandinavia.

Sweden is down at #6 these days, but we still clock in at roughly twice the consumption per capita compared to the US.

And the word "fika" which the first place is named for has loads of connotations, it's simply deeply entrenched here.

Going by that page perhaps I should start a dutch coffee house in NY!

I wonder if there are many Starbucks in Scandinavia? I know of only one here in the Netherlands.

Then there is also at least one in Utrecht Central, so we are down to 3 already.

Anyway, I know it was not your point.

Besides, as a Frenchman (living in the Netherlands), I'm not fond at all of Dutch coffee, but hey, it could probably work in "New Amsterdam" ;)

I overheard some people recently talking about how they sometimes take the airport express train just to have coffee at Starbucks. Which is just insane, not just because the coffee isn't particularly good (and Oslo has plenty of extremely good barista places) but because a round-trip ticket from Oslo to the airport costs $56 (€46).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Barista_Championship

So they can at least make a decent cup.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7540480.stm

Unfortunately I just prefer Big Coffees off the shelf brand, but don't know what to try. Just that it's not Starbucks.

Is there somewhere that I can order Aussie coffee from and know its actually the coffee you describe and not just branded 'Aussie'?

What they are referring to is coffee made by an Australia barista.

Basically, coffee culture is huge in Australia, and being a quality barista is seen as a cool kind of job to have, despite the generally low pay.

It's not unusual on a city street in Australia to have 5 or 6 coffee shops in a row. At this point, they are competing on coffee + barista quality. With this type of competition, the consumer gets well educated on the nuances between cups, and so it goes.

I had no idea this idea of 'the aussie barista' was being exported to the world, but I guess it makes sense.

In reality, what you're probably seeing is the competitive advantage given from a business cluster in Porter speak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster

Ironically it grew out of Italian culture, mainly through immigrants to Australia. While my best coffee experience was still in Italy, generally I find coffee in other parts of the world appalling in comparison, esp in the USA.

Demonstrably untrue. Like most coffee producers, a lot of the beans are imported, some of it is grown locally. But they are hand selected, blended and roasted here in Australia and are most definitely produced in commercial quantities to be consumed here and exported as far as Korea.

To name but a few Campos, Sprocket, Lavazza.

Australia has very rich Italian and European cultural heritage which means we cultivated a coffee culture quite early on, relative to other western countries.

I guess I took 'Aussie' coffee to be places that marketed themselves as 'Australian', or internationally recognised Australian coffee brands. While everyone can find a bottle of Australian wine, and what it means to be Australian wine, defining it for coffee is a difficult task.

dpark, 'Western' is more of a cultural moniker than a geographical moniker.

If you want to get specific about it, all of Europe west of Greenwich is not 'Western' - and that's most of it. Tunisia is definitely Western Hemisphere but you wouldn't call it west.

By the way, does Australia count as a western nation? It seems to be in the wrong location for that. This is totally tangential to the coffee topic, just something that I found curious.

Good point on Lavazza, was a bad assumption.

My speculation is that this is due to a general lack of hip/divy/young "artisan" cafes/restaurants in Australia (yes, yes, I know there are some, I'm talking purely about prevalence) compared with "hip" American cities. This is particularly true outside of the hip parts of town (Surrey Hills, mostly).

US coffee quality depends greatly on which city you're in, and the barista being a cool job is true in many places as well. The Pacific Northwest (Portland, Seattle -- despite the Starbucks black mark) has really amazing coffee shops, and they're everywhere. If you're ever in Portland, I highly suggest Barista -- http://baristapdx.com/ -- it will change your life.

I think it's mainly a freshness thing - after resting for four or five days after roasting, coffee is only at its very best for 10 - 20 days at most (as whole beans).

It's very good, but you'll wait a long time on weekends.

Hold on a sec. What about Italians?

When I say craftsmanship what I'm really referring to is the overall brand that Starbucks (or other coffee shops) have built. A brand that says "what you get here will meet your expectations".

For me, your first point sums up entirely my problem with the coffee argument -- and specifically why I spend $4 a day on coffee but rarely buy an app (though I wasn't like this initially). Even if I go to [insert coffee shop here (calm down HN)] and the coffee is a bit crappy, it still gets the job done. I won't be as happy that I spent the money on it, but at the end of the drink, I've got caffeine in my system.

The state of the software in app stores, and lets be honest here, is a bit shit. There was a popular post the other day by some guy about not being able to make a living being an app developer, and it was all "boohoo"s.. until you look at what he's made. absolute crap. A concrete calculator that looks like an Intro to Android chapter one exercise? Boy, I wonder why he's not raking in the millions. Look at the top 100 right now. It the same 3 games over and over. My issue is that when I take a gamble on your app, and it turns out to be completely awful I don't get anything out of it at the end of the day, I'm simply out a dollar -- and no, that's not a large amount of money, but it is the principle. I feel robbed of that dollar because I got nothing in return for it.

I travel for work constantly, when I first got my Android phone, I would browse through the Google Market before a flight, and then dump up to $5 on whatever game seemed interesting. I had an initial expectation of quality-- I thought up to $5 was perfectly reasonable. After, I'm going to (hopefully) get a couple of hours of enjoyment out of this app. However, I only did this handful of time before realizing that reading the SkyMall magazine is more interesting alternative to most apps.

"Those of us in app development love to talk about how ridiculous it is that people will drop $4 every other day on a cup of coffee but will not “waste” 99 cents on our hot new app."

For this to be an appropriate comparison, there would have to be a coffee shop that had the massive peaks and nulls like that of an app store. Imagine a coffee shop where getting a bad cup of coffee didn't simply mean, "of less than ideal quality given the price," and instead meant getting a black, undrinkable, coffee-ground-laden sludge that can only be thrown away after the first sip. I think people would be a little less inclined to spend money on their coffee. Only under these circumstances would I view getting a cup as holding the same "risk of waste" as buying a random app from the App store.

Actually, the tragedy of it is that Starbucks uses pretty good beans. If you buy their brand of beans and make the coffee yourself, you can make a damned good cup of coffee.

But Starbucks apparently has standardized entirely the wrong procedure for using those beans, so that the end product tastes like they accidentally dropped a bouillon cube in it.

But I just want coffee flavored coffee.

But I realize that my habits are not exactly typical.

My caffeine/theanine formula:

Caffeine - 1.6g

L-theanine - 3.2g

Water - 2 cups

This makes for 100mg of caffeine per fluid ounce of solution, which makes measuring pretty easy. That is like a cup of coffee on the weak side of average, or 2-3 cups of tea. 200mg is like a strong cup of coffee. I have found that 100mg twice a day is close to the sweet spot where I get energy from it but don't build a tolerance. Obviously if you already have a tolerance, you'll want to use more. This mixture should be refrigerated to keep stuff from growing in it. Also, you can vary the concentration a little, but there is a limit at which the theanine solution will gel into an unusable colloidal mass. Hot water is useful for getting the ingredients to dissolve initially.

The theanine is there for two reasons: 1) it smooths out the jitters from caffeine, and has a mood elevating effect when used with caffeine and 2) studies indicate that combined with caffeine, it has a number of cognitive benefits. 2:1 theanine to caffeine is around the ratio that evidence supports.

My flavoring solution is:

Citric acid - 30g

Malic acid - 10g (optional)

Sucralose - 1.5g

Orange (or lemon) extract (83% alcohol) - 8g

Water - 2 cups

I put this in a squeeze bottle like the kind fast food places sometimes put vinegar and oil in, and it only takes a little squirt (about a teaspoon) to flavor a cup of water. I don't bother measuring this, as it's easy enough to do by taste. But do be careful not to make it too strong or the citric acid will hurt your mouth. Nothing dangerous, but it can make your gums sore.

Malic acid is not strictly necessary. It adds a bit of fruitiness, but it's subtle. You can leave it out and use 35g of citric instead of 30g.

Sucralose is the sweetener in Splenda, but it's important to remember that Splenda is highly diluted with fillers to make it the same sweetness as sugar. Pure sucralose is 600 times as sweet as sugar, so it must be measured with care. Hard Rhino is the only source I've found for it. Other sweeteners like xylitol, stevia extract, and erythritol are easier to find. Xylitol and erythritol are not sweeter than sugar, and I find stevia unpleasant. If you like stevia, it's actually more cost effective than sucralose; it's half as sweet, but it's cheaper.

If you don't want to bother with the flavoring solution, you can also mix the caffeine with anything that is sweet and sour because those flavors mask the bitterness of the caffeine. Citrus is particularly effective.

These are the most cost effective ways I've found to have tasty beverages and caffeine. The caffeine solution comes out to about 7 cents per reconstituted cup (18 cents for the equivalent of a Starbucks Grande). Most of that is actually the l-theanine; if you forgo that, it's only half a cent per cup.

The flavoring comes out to under two cents per cup, or $0.30/gallon, but depends on how much you use.

So basically, if I take this with me on a trip, I can have the same caffeine boost as a Grande, plus theanine to take away the jitters, for twenty-five cents. And as an added bonus, it's actually drinkable.

Edit: One more thing. You can use volumetric measurements if you can find the bulk density for your powders, but I don't recommend it. The scale I have is an American Weigh DIA20, which costs about 20 bucks. The only thing I don't like about it is that its maximum capacity is 20g, but it's easy enough to measure the citric acid in two shots.

Although I noticed one has just opened up on Elizabeth St. I guess they still attract tourists looking for something they know?