Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Restaurants That Starbucks barista is gonna love on you
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 8:50 PM
The baristas at the Ansley Starbucks were all, um, eagerly anticipating the much publicized closing of more than 7,000 stores for three hours at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. The purpose was for all employees to undergo training ordered by Howard Schultz, the company's recently reappointed CEO, to recapture the "soul of the past," according to the New York Times.
Actually, Schultz wouldn't call it training. He told employees via a video message: “This is not about training. This is about the love and compassion and commitment that we all need to have for the customer.†Oh yeah! In a memo a year ago, he talked about losing “much of the romance and theater†at the shops that seem to dot the corner of every urban intersection.
Actually, the Times reports that sales have been slacking at Starbucks and the company is closing 100 shops, including one here on North Highland Avenue. It has also cut back expansion plans.
I asked the Starbucks baristas Tuesday what there was to learn about making espresso when the shop uses an automated machine. One explained that the barista can still control certain factors that affect the taste of the drink. One of those, certainly, is the steaming of milk. It's very true that some baristas seem more talented at that than others.
The truth, in my own experience, is that the automated espresso makers are, overall, advantageous. You could certainly tell who was well trained and who was not when the Ansley shop used a manual machine. While it's true that a good shot is not now as good as it was when made by a talented barista on the manual machine, an inferior automatic shot is nowhere near as bad as that of a poorly made manual shot.
If Starbucks really wants to improve things, it could start offering quality pastries and better sandwiches. It could also provide completely free wireless Internet service like most independent shops do. In the spring, the stores are switching from T-Mobile to AT&T WiFi, which will be free to AT&T subscribers, but the rest of us will have to pay or maintain Starbucks cards. This is a ridiculous hassle in a world of free WiFi. (And the Ansley Starbucks' T-Mobile WiFi is infamously undependable.)
I'm not among those who begrudges Starbucks its corporate ambiance. The Ansley store has an assortment of entertaining, personable baristas, and there's a virtual community of regulars there (although the failing wireless connection is driving away some). Also, my understanding is that employees receive benefits, like health insurance, superior to the average in the food industry. The espresso's decent. So it ain't all bad.
Comments (10)
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Frankly I think both Starbuck's and Caribou could go out of business and I wouldn't miss them. I grind and pull my own shots at home, steam milk properly, and save about $3 per latte. If I have to go out there are a variety of independent shops that serve better product than the McCoffee stands and they really need and deserve your business. Aurora is the best I've had in Atlanta - consistently smooth and tasty.
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Yes, I agree that Aurora's coffee is the best in the city, but I can't comfortably sit in Aurora with my laptop for three hoursj. It's great coffee, but it's a lousy office.
Actually when they switch the Wi-Fi to AT&T you'll get 2 hours free Wi-Fi per day. The catch is it seems you'll have to use the Starbucks card (gift card, free) to get the free Wi-Fi, which is actually a good thing, can u imagine the Ansley Starbucks if it was free all day? It's hard enough to get a seat in there....
It's hard to think “romance and theater†when there's a Starbucks located in the Kroger.
Oddly, the hard-core Starbuck lovers who post to the internet gossip sites really seem to despise the sandwiches, and are happy to see Schultz stop their sales. The complaint seems to be that they mask the coffee-shop smell with a McDonalds smell.
Octane is the best office in the city and also makes the best cappuccino. I think Aurora has the best brewed coffee, and their espresso drinks are awesome. But Octane's got it all - great space to work, great coffee drinks, delicious tofu sandwiches, and Belgian beer (if the work becomes too stressful).
I agree that Octane is the best coffee house in the city - they have the highest quality drinks in both the brewed and espresso categories and the staff really seem to know their stuff. One drawback is that it gets so crowded with people perched in seats with laptops for long periods of time that there can often be no available seating. That means that I have to get coffee to go in a paper cup when I'd really rather sit and drink in the ceramic cups they have for in-house customers (one feature I wish Aurora had). Sip in Lindberg Station actually makes very comparable coffee drinks using the same Counter Culture beans as Octane, but I'm not as taken with the atmosphere there, which is more of an uptown luxury vibe than a downtown artsy one.
Broderick: To my mind, if you have to put money on a Starbucks card to use the WiFi, it's not really free. I am told, however, that there won't be a limit on the number of cards you can maintain. It just seems like an absurdly complicated scheme to me. T-Mobile will, by the way, still be available at Starbucks, according to their website. The Ansley Starbucks has been effectively free for many people for months. Across the courtyard, the smoothie shop has a WiFi signal that many people use. But it hasn't been broadcasting in more than a week and you already see the effect on the number of people at the Starbucks. Yeah, Octane is great but it's not next door to my gym and its kind of out of the way for me.
Darin: You have to ask for a ceramic cup at Starbucks. I always drink my triple-espresso macchiato in an au lait cup.
You know---and I hate to be this person because I am really not this person, honestly!--calling the baristas at Starbucks "baristas" is honestly a joke. Bless their hearts, they got a job to tide them over between callbacks for a part or part-time for American Apparel, but they are NOT baristas. I trained with the best for the first part of my inadvertent coffee career and I know more than an obvious publicity stunt could ever gain them. Eight years and I love what I do; I am excellent at what I do, and I don't need the McDonald's of Coffee to re-Neducate me about that. So unless Starbucks plans on going back to the old school system part-time, this is nothing but "gee whiz, we're still awesome" stunt.
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