Showdown: Who is the King of Coffees?

as I sip my Venti Starbucks coffee right now, I wonder to myself if I am the only Normal Guy who prefers the robust flavor of Seattle's own coffee beanery. While Starbucks is likely the most popular coffee franchise in America, there are a few more credible caffeinated contenders that many rely on to get their daily dose of java. Each deserves a fair and careful examination of both their flavor AND effectiveness,ie how well it wakes you up. For this experiment SNG will dissect the four major players in American coffee today, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, 7-11, and McDonald's.

Dunkin Donuts:

Dunkin is the ultimate enigma in the coffee world. Inside every cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee is a perplexing riddle, one that often leaves the drinker scratching his or her head. This aforementioned brain buster is the baffling conflict between a beautiful flavor and a consistently underwhelming jolt. The disparity between the two in a Dunkin Donuts cup of coffee is STILL to this day one of the most disappointing things I have ever come across as a young man. Let me state this outright; Dunkin Donuts is the Michael Jordan of coffee taste. There's an instance right before it hits your lips where you catch a whiff of the aroma wafting through your nostrils and something overcomes you. For half a second you'll say "damn I hope this tastes as good as it smells" and sure enough it does. But sadly, to remain consistent with my analogy, if the coffee tastes like His Airness, it's ability to wake you up is probably Grant Hill; so much promise, without ever realizing its full potential. Do not get me wrong, Dunkin Donuts is still my heart but I see it in symbolic terms. Ride with me; whereas PG County still manages to feel more homely to me than Davidsonville, I've realized that inevitably one must move on to more promising things if he or she has the resources and energy to do so. Like the County of Prince George's, Dunkin Donuts is a symbol of the working class and it still has a firm grip on that demographic's wallets. But the ceiling is only so high. You get your flavor and then you wait to have your eyes opened more than they were before you purchased the coffee, only to realize an hour later that you are at same state of awareness that you were prior to your purchase.

McDonalds:

McDonald's coffee is pretty much like McDonald's food; you are never pumped about the purchase, but when you're in need it serves its purpose and remains consistently affordable.The taste is nothing to write home about and it can best be described as "it tastes the way you would expect coffee from Mickey D's to taste." You may say that is a copout review, but if that's the case it's the most honest copout you will ever read. In terms of its ability to get your day going, it performs that service with a C+ effort as well. But that is what McDonald's coffee is; a physical example of mediocrity. For years McDonald's knew it's role and simply remained content with dishing out bla coffee. But as of late they seem to have gotten a little big for their britches. Do not be fooled by the cup's language, for there is truly nothing "premium" about this "premium" product. Furthermore, McDonald's is really playing its hand a bit arrogantly as of late, as it has launched a few hundred "McCafes", Starbucks-style espresso bars located in the dining area itself. Being a marketing major, I find this personally to be a dangerous and risky move on their part. Is anyone really that pumped about McDonald's coffee? Perhaps, I am the only one not seeing it. McDonald's gets a Luc Longley for both taste and power; it does it's job alright, but by no means is it going to be the difference maker in 4th quarter.

7-11:

Allow me to cut to the chase here and just declare 7-11 to be a
"turrible"(<----Barkley)cup of coffee. It does nothing positive for your tongue OR your alertness center. If anything, your taste buds will come to hate your choice of purchase and you will indeed wake up, but only to the fact that this coffee blows on all counts. What remains confounding to me is that 7-11, at least using the store in Seabrook as my one case study, sells this crap by the gallon and it never gets better. If anything it has actually managed to depreciate over the years. Forgive my viciousness, but you must understand that 7-11 brought this upon themselves. Up until about May, 7-11 seemed to find a small degree of pride in being awful, as evidenced by their unusually sturdy styrofoam cups. The cups felt weird in the hand, but they delivered a message that was reassuring; "yeah the stuff in this cup will beat the hell out of your body's ecosystem, but at least your hand is not burning right now." I dug that. 7-11 used to have signs up that said something like "We're the anti-bistro" (ie, the anti-Starbucks) and I dug that too. But sure enough, they caved. In an effort to keep up with the Joneses, 7-11 introduced these thin paper cups with sleeves, and they were not quality cups and sleeves either. In July I was pouring some of this liquid-sewage next to these weathered old Morgan Freeman type construction worker, a PG County product down to the bone gristle. I didn't know him and he didn't know me,but when he turned to me, stared me in the eye with vulnerable disappointment and stated "these cups ain't worth shit", it sliced my heart with a rusted dagger. I knew what he meant, and although the new cup didn't have nearly as devastating an effect on my psyche as it did his, that moment really put in perspective how godawful 7-11 coffee really is. I was going to give these guys a Shawn Bradley for flavor and energy provider, but then I realized that Shawn Bradley is at least 7 foot and if nothing else he can get in the way. So I'll call 7-11 the Kwame Brown of coffees, because this is one cup of Joe that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Starbucks:

If you are looking for an example of clever marketing, then Starbucks takes the cake. What many people fail to realize is that Starbucks is as "corporate" as Nike or Microsoft, but they portray such a hip and accessible image that no one ever even realizes it. As colossal as they be, to their credit, they have never taken their consumer for granted. Last Spring for one day, in response to complaints of lacking customer service in a dozen or so stores nationwide Starbucks shutdown every shop nationwide at 4 PM in order to re-train everyone if it's employees/"baristas". Moves like this are reassuring, and they do a great deal to convince customers that their patronage is appreciated. After all, when you're the king, it is easy to get complacent. Personally, I could care less about their service. At the end of the day, Starbucks wears the championship belt (complete with nWo spraypraint.) The coffee tastes like Dennis Rodman, that is to say completely different but a pleasure to watch/drink, and it wakes you up like Shaq on the Lakers, just DOMINATING your head to the point that you might almost convince yourself that you could run a marathon after consuming a Venti cup of this stuff. It's that powerful, and it can be overwhelming if you are not careful. On more than one occasion I have made the silly mistake of drinking one of the big ones on an empty stomach, rocking my senses to the point that my fingers shake and I go into a pseudo-shock. But when when everyone else reaches for Toll's Aderol on Thursday at 10 PM with a five-pager due Friday at 11:20, I opt for the tallboy Pike Place roast instead. For the most part this method has proved fruitful. Simply put, for your dollar, you cannot get a better cup of coffee than a Starbucks cup of coffee. All contenders bow down before the mighty Sumatra blend.