Does Starbucks serve everything in disposal cups in the U.K., as it does in the U.S.?
This feature of its business practices puts me off as much as its measurement units.
For $4 (or anything over $1, actually) I expect a real cup, and I have always imagined
there'd be more like me in Europe.
Chris
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [USMA:14955] Starbucks
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 16:30:53 +0100
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization: UK Metrication Association
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I refuse to use these places, but I found an article on the Guardian
Web site
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4232490,00.html)
which contains the following:
>Welcome to www.ihatestarbucks.com, where you can have a
>global gripe about the coffee chain you love to hate, and give it a
>good kicking in the company of disgruntled independent cafe
>patrons, "terminated partners", "ex-baristas", anti-globalisation
>activists and the massed (and swelling) international ranks of
>people who find themselves distinctly underwhelmed by the
>prospect of a decaff, tall, low-fat, extra-whip, cr�me-de-menthe
>mocha with a chai spice muffin.
>
>Each contributor to the I Hate Starbucks messageboard has a
>different bugbear. Several want to know why Starbucks uses
>Italian words such as "barista" (Italian for "barman") when its
>largest market, the US, is English-speaking. "Does this
>translate as: 'Ha, ha, you've paid $4 for a mocha'?" one asks. An
>ex-barista, who worked in an outlet in a Manhattan bookstore,
>reports that many of this presumably literate clientele now think
>"venti" means "large" in Italian, not "20", because Starbucks
>uses it as the name for its largest coffee. (The "venti" is actually
>a 20fl oz measure - though the chain likes to talk Italian, it still
>counts in imperial, not metric, units.)
Chris
