[el ess A]

I tried Starbucks once. It's not a good value for what you're getting, IMO. It's 90% hype and 10% product. It's like somehow they have to justify a $5 cup of coffee. I guess it makes financial sense only if you're a pinhead. That's almost as much as a 6 pack of beer. Forget that. It's not bad, just not worth the money to me. Probably because I'm not a coffee addict. I go through so much coffee in a week it's easier to save by making it at the house and buy gas with the difference in price of a foo-foo coffee instead.

It's obviously a psyche thing, thinking if you spend more for it, it's somehow better. Which may be to a point, but not that much better for the price. That's why they bought out Seattle's Best brand a few years ago, because the competition was closing in. Now, they're trying to push Seattle's Best brand anywhere they can, because they knew they needed a Wal-Mart version to compete, while leaving Starbucks brand as the "premium" brand. Without the lesser brand bouying them up in this tough economic climate, I think there'd have been more Starbucks closing last year than there was.