I work for a dental office and I have to let people know about this.

Premera Starbucks Dental Plan 1037844:

Allows dental implants if all the following circumstances are true:

1) The dental implant would replace a tooth which was missing at birth (congenitally missing tooth exception)
2) The patient was under the age of 21 (age-limitation)
3) The patient was covered under the plan at the time the extraction tooth place (missing tooth clause)

In other words there is no possible way that someone could get an implant covered under starbucks’ plan.

Also, it would be risky to place an implant in a male, or female perhaps (I’m no dentist), age 20 or younger because of the latent jaw growth.

Just a thought: Maybe they ought to tell their members there is no implant coverage instead of making exceptions which would make it impossible for coverage.

This is insanity.

I agree, that Italian coffees are the absolute best. You are right about the Caffe Macchiato. That is how it’s supposed to be prepared. Either a very small amount of frothed milk, or, a teaspoon of steamed milk. I’ve never had one at Starbucks, so I can’t say.

Coffee is a lot personal taste, obviously. I’m all for someone coming to me and saying, “I don’t personally like Starbucks.” For someone to come to me however, and say that Starbucks is junk, is an extreme generalization. Some people DO like Starbucks, and I happen to be one of them. I just like their roasts. I’ve never had one I didn’t like actually.

Back to Italy for a second. How do you make a frappe over there? I’ve been trying hard, but I can’t seem to get it down.

To Wickett, I love dark and bold coffee but I just can’t drink Starbucks. I’ve also been living in Italy for the past 6 years and drink espresso all the time. A real espresso is much bolder than any starbucks drink. If it’s done well you don’t even need to add sugar. Also they only cost 80 cents and Rome is expensive.

Now when I go home I can’t even enter a Starbucks, it’s not just because of the coffee it’s the fact that they pretend to make Italian coffee, and use Italian names, but none of their drinks even come close to what it supposed to be.

I work in a bar in Rome that serves a lot of tourists. I don’t even know what a Starbucks macchiato is, but a cafe macchiato in Italy is an espresso with a little bit of frothed milk. Every time I make one for an American I get weird looks so I’m guessing Starbucks makes a completely different thing.

I wouldn’t care so much but there are a few American style restaurants here that actually serve american food. So I don’t understand why Starbucks has to butcher Italian coffee. At least just make up your own names. Don’t take something that works from someone else if you can’t properly reproduce it.

Also Italy is still one of the few countries in Europe that doesn’t have Starbucks. You’d think with all that authentic Italian coffee we’d be the first.

On a side note, I would love to work at a Starbucks, but I don’t have one near me unfortunately.

I managed a Sbux for some years. The reason I worked there originally was b/c I was a fan. I learned a ton about coffee and now have a much greater appreaciation for the coffee trade. I left because @ sbux I was actually in the retail business, not the coffee business. I met coffee growers and brokers b/c of my position and still believe they do a good job of getting a quality product to the market as a whole. Imho they are way too big to keep making leaps and bounds ahead as far as quality and service or even righting many of the wrongs left in their wake, but…we cannot have things both ways. either they will be saturating every market so we can get a caffine fix at our leisure or they could have remained small and not become the 800Lb gorilla.

The other coffee you mentioned,#65, is not available to the majority of markets in the US and unless you are suggesting we all just make our coffee @ home and stay out of the retail stores the point is moot. I will skip my coffe when I’m out if I cannot get to a place w/ a good brew. I used to have people wait 10-15 minutes to talk to me so they could tell me how good the coffee was. It’s not everybody’s taste and not every barista in every store prepares it correcty every time but the coffee itself is not a bad product. (btw-Anytime you get a cup you don’t like just give it back and ask for a fresh cup. Policy/expectation is to brew a french press of ANY blend requested by a customer at ANY time AND for every employee to be invested in you having a drink that YOU think is PERFECT.) I am not a fan of the business model (more stores, more money, bigger business) and I do like other coffees but I still go to Sbux a number of times per month. It is very dark and they didn’t invent that style. We asked internally for a lighter roast for years and the response is that it isn’t Sbux to roast light. Oh well I go somewhere else for that.

If good coffee is the goal and you happen to be an expert then educate others. It’s the second most widely traded comodity we all have a lot to learn.

#64 is right about some small shops. We had one in my town and not only was the coffee bad the service was marginal at best. They closed and many people blamed Sbux opening. No, they did bad business. Many (even most) of the small shops are in business b/c sbux paved the way. And sbux keeping coffee on the American mind only helps the coffee business as a whole. Just look at this thread it’s been going for over three years and the conversation is still passionate!! We all love coffee and if we are honest for the vast majority of us we trace the cultivation of that love if even indirectly to Sbux in some way.

I too appreciate the local coffee shop, however, almost all of the coffee shops I’ve been in were awful. I felt like I was in someone’s basement, and the drinks were a 10:1 ration of sugar and milk, with maybe half a teaspoon of bad coffee thrown in.