Originally posted by: Descartes
I go to Starbucks (*$) under the following conditions:
1) Someone else is going. This could be a friend, colleague, or even a lunch date. A lot of people like the atmosphere of a coffee shops, and for a lot of people *$ is the obvious choice.
2) No other options. This might be if I'm sitting in an airport for a 4-hour layover, a town I've never been in before, or simply a matter of convenient (e.g. if one is close by). Additionally, sometimes those local shops are far more horrible than *$. They'll use stale beans, bad equipment and undertrained employees.
I think that's about it. Their espresso is about as insipid as it gets, but it's more a matter of the equipment and training than anything else. Milk texture is a large part of what makes milk-based drinks like a macchiato, latte, cappuccino, etc. palatable. They almost never texture their milk properly. Again, that's just training.
They actually use high-quality beans. Their roast is not that dark; in fact, when fresh, it actually adds a nice character. I've had freshly roasted *$ beans before (as in a week from roast date), and I've pulled quite a few espresso shots using those beans. There's a substantial improvement, but that again goes back to training and equipment.
So, we shouldn't hate on them too much, in my opinion. They serve a niche and they server it well. They will never touch the quality you can achieve from your better "indy" shops (e.g. Intelligentsia, GimmeCoffee, Stumptown, Vivace, Hines, etc.), but they are better than the majority of what you find out there.