Who'd have thought that a coffee shop could dream to organically expand from the inert machinations of a single locale and turn into a globally recognisable brand floating on New York's NASDAQ in a short lifespan.
Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world with 15,012 stores in 44 countries.
In the 1990s, Starbucks was opening a new store every workday and continued at this relentless pace throughout most of the early part of this century.
It's growth has slowed somewhat in the America and Britain, but it has targeted emerging markets.
It has sold the American ideal of a cup of coffee to every nation on this planet.
Perhaps that is why it is also seen as a bit of a monster. Cafe's in the traditional sense are usually places of quiet reflection and safe refuge away from the breakneck world of acquisitions, mergers, stocks and shares.
Starbucks, instead, is the coffee shop Leviathan. A creature on the rampage. The United States of Coffee. Only recently slowed down by the economic climate at large.
Still, reasons for its popularity, is that, unlike pretentiously arty coffee shops that require you to wear a beret, and smoke a cigarette in a holder (and check your pockets before entry for a copy of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu - in original French), Starbucks makes no such aspirations.
Starbucks is artifically crass. It is the anti-cafe and harbours no aspirations other than to make coffee big business. It is a business model for unmitigated growth.
It openly sells the idea that it wants every man, woman and child to drink coffee and lots of it, in the hope of making more of a buck.
The magic of the cafe is removed from this soulless place - there is no meeting of minds, no conversations between De Sartre and Beauvoir.
Yet perhaps, that can be a good thing. There's plenty of places were good minds meet, and if you're a touch bohemie and are after trendy beatknick places, you'll know this isn't going to be your bag just by judging from the outside.
This place is for single mothers trying to catch their breath for a moment, career girls and guys reading the Financial Times, or students with toussled hair and an obsessive penchant for cardigans. People with little time to do anything other than order a latte and then get on with their lives. That's the Starbucks model.
Perhaps, we were naive in many ways in thinking a coffee can be enjoyed at leisure - to make a cup of espresso, it takes the farmer to work the land to grow the coffee, the hired hand to prepare it, to ground it, to package it, the sea merchant to ship it over, the welder to weld the metal that makes the coffee machine, the production line assemblers who put it together; all the way up the chain to the bar staff that prepare it using skills they learned over time, to you, the consumer.
Labour - all those sweat and tears and calloused hands, went into making that coffee.
So perhaps, that innocence of casual coffee was merely a mirage and the reality is that smart, quick draw cafe's like Starbucks are the survivors of a race to bring you your tea-time drink.
A race and one that Starbucks is leading.
It's all about economics and post industrial revolution -this is Starbuck's world now.
That may be all a bit too much to digest with your cappuccino and amaretto. So, in plain-speak, if you see a Starbucks, ignore the politics that goes with it and make a choice there and then - either go in, place an order, read a paper and go about your daily business -it really does make a good cup of coffee
OR - if you really want to hurt big corporations where it hurts - go to a local shop, buy a coffeemaker and brew your own.
You'll know then and there whether it's more convenient for Starbuck's to do it for you or not.
That's what it ultimately boils down to after all. read more