The Legend of the "Mochaburglar" and "Espresso Grimace"

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Aug 28, 2006 3:33PM

Gather 'round the coffee pot, kids! It's storytime.

Did you know that, in their ongoing quest to take McDonalds' "billions and billions served" philosophy to sickening new lows, Starbucks plans on opening another 250 stores in the greater Chicago area within the next five years? Did you know that a dozen of those stores are going to be downtown? That's nice for all those people commuting downtown to work, especially suburbanites, since two-thirds of Starbucks' planned expansion is targeted for outside the city limits. Working in the big downtown all day can make Mommy and Daddy homesick for Flossmoor and Roselle.

We learned this by reading this article in Crain's Chicago Business this morning, while sipping coffee made from beans roasted in our neighborhood's independently-owned coffee shop. Now, some of you like to remind us that Starbucks gives even their part-time employees benefits, health insurance, and profit sharing options. And we keep telling you that Starbucks must do that, if they insist on dominating the marketplace like they do.

Of course, the only people we've heard from defending profit sharing and health insurance for Starbucks employees as a good thing are the people addicted to their burnt-tasting coffee, who probably have better health insurance and profit sharing plans from their jobs, and consider gibberish Starbucks Italian to be a second language. Those are the same people who say bad things to us, like "fuck off", when we talk about why we like mom-and-pop coffee shops. Chicago already has eight coffee shops for every one hundred thousand people, so how much is enough? One day, we might see Starbucks offer espresso in an IV drip, like Mick Fleetwood used to do for red wine after Fleetwood Mac concerts. Or you can snort lines of pure organic Sumatra directly off the counter. That would be fun, seeing scores of office workers, brown residue on their noses, doing the teeth-gnashing, tweaking for their next bump of Starbucks. We think variety is the spice of life, and a Starbucks on every other block doesn't add up to variety.

Wasn't that a great story, kids? We hope you liked it. We'd ask you to take a nap, but we know you're wired on your venti mocha frappucino, skim, no whip. So just run around in a circle until you pass out, instead.