The Science of Affection

What do I care if we never see eye to eye again?
Obviously I care enough that I had to come find you and show you how much I need you.
What I think of you is much broader than I’ve let on, and that was my mistake.
There should be no question of who’s got your back; I will be there, as close as you need me to be.
You’re broken, let me make you feel better.
You see my affection collected in the little things that I’ve done.
Give way to the things that are bigger than we’ll ever hope to be.

What the Starbucks Trenta Means for the Coffee World

Few things make a coffee man shudder like the notion of a mega 31-ounce coffee. If indeed there exists a shark to jump in the coffee world, the new Trenta is the great white. In fact, the more imaginative me envisions a large black dorsal fin mounted to the coffee chain’s monster sippy-lid and a leather-clad Arthur Fonzarelli water-skiing toward it on two large stir sticks. And I don’t even dislike Starbucks or the Fonz.

Why this reaction?

Along the path of perpetually improving quality, the escape route of family-size beverages isn’t one that delivers anyone to perfection. If you’re paying for a Starbucks coffee, perfection should be expected. What went wrong with those people at the green mermaid? Instead of striving for coffee nirvana — a goal they once set for themselves — they now opt for cheap beans from places like southern China and then hawk the brew in Costco-sized containers to a public that must (one hopes) see the foolishness in ingesting this kind of volume.

In the coffee world, love them or not, Starbucks was once cool. They single-handedly blazed a new trail for the rest of us in the craft to follow. This one, however — the Trenta — will find few followers, I’m afraid. I won’t be one. Instead, tonight I’ll drink a cool 40-ounce malt beer, eat at an all-you-can-eat shrimp-and-salad bar, and mourn the loss of cool in a once-visionary company.

 

What the Starbucks Trenta Means for the Coffee World.

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