Starbucks verdict on “smelly sandwiches” suffers backlash

A little over a month ago, I made a post entitled “Starbucks corporate analysts: sausage on a roll stinks like a dead dog,” expressing my opinion that their decision to remove the “odoriferous” sandwiches from their menus is “…a bunch of smelly, nouveau-rich, pop-culture mock-elitist bullshit….”

The backlash is here. And it’s doing abysmally, because y’all want smarmy stuff like pumpkin-cream cheese scones with chocolate chips for brekkie, I guess.

Andrew Beaujon of Washington City Paper weighs in on the issue:

You Can Pry My Peppered Bacon, Aged Cheddar, and Egg From My Cold, Dead Hands

Involuntarily, I shouted “NOOOO!” when I read this line in the Times‘ story about Starbucks’ three-hour training session last night:

Lest anyone doubt that Starbucks is serious, employees were reminded that the chain intended to get rid of odoriferous breakfast sandwiches, just so customers can smell the coffee again.

Couldn’t they just get rid of the tea, or the Marcus Samuelsson–inspired baked goods, instead? I’ve got two kids, and sometimes those sandwiches are the only reason I have anything to eat before noon. Oh but wait: The Internet comes to the rescue

Meanwhile, the food critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune asks:

…I’ve endured parched maple scones in L.A., sickly-sweet streusel coffeecake in Chicago and a muffin in the Boston airport that didn’t make it past the first trash can.

What’s with Starbucks’ pastries? How can they be uniformly dry and tasteless in markets across the country? How can a company that prides itself on consistency and quality control of its coffee products be so hopelessly out of the loop with its edibles…?

Read the entire column

 

Contributed: Literal and figurative stench from a bygone day

Thanks to Stinkbro for sending this along.

Starbucks corporate analysts: sausage on a roll stinks like a dead dog

I like coffee, a lot. I drink it every day, all day. But as it is with so many other things here in post-millenium America, a lot of people can’t be satisfied just enjoying a cup of good coffee. They have to turn it into a culture and yammer on about “bouquet” or “citrus overtones,” shell out tips equivalent to the price of their beverage, and tap their foot in 4/4 time to the 5/4 time signature coming out of the sound system.

And what a bunch of smelly, nouveau-rich, pop-culture mock-elitist bullshit the article below is. You’d think that a breakfast sandwich was on par with ass, to warrant a position as shallow as this.

As for “atmosphere” – well, Starbucks, Inc., I like your coffee, but I find it virtually impossible to either read or chat with free-form jazz blaring out of the speaker over my head. I know another writer who routinely goes to McDonald’s for his personal “coffee/idea sessions,” specifically to avoid the distracting nature of the Starbucks “atmosphere.”

Irony of ironies, that worldly philosophers, painters, and writers of a bygone day, if brought to the present, might choose somewhere other than Starbucks to hatch their world-shattering ideas (there’s a short story in that – go ahead and use it). Possibly even because they couldn’t get sausage on a roll, there.

Starbucks: Ooh, That Smell

What’s that smell!?

If that is what you were thinking when you walked into a Starbucks recently you are not alone. Analysts agreed on Thursday that the smell of warm breakfast sandwiches is causing a major brand crisis for the coffee giant.

“The warming breakfast aroma is its biggest problem, overwhelming the coffee aroma that Starbucks views as critical to its experience,” said Bear Stearns analyst Joseph Buckley.

Added JPMorgan analsyt John Ivankoe: “We will welcome the removal of this food … because in certain cases the stores did in fact smell like cooked processed food, and not at all like coffee….”

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