You can't deny its importance in the evolution of coffee culture in the United States. Without the explosive popularity of Starbucks, there would be only a fraction of the small, independently-owned coffee shops that exist today. These small business owners are capitalizing on the America's still fairly new craziness for the high-quality caffeine fix. Starbucks has also helped to drive sales of better home coffee machines, including pump-driven espresso machines, pod-based coffee makers (some of which are actually quite good), the French press and high quality drip coffee makers. If not for Starbucks, most of us would still be making Folgers crystals at home and drinking whatever's warm from the office coffee machine. We would not even have the option of shuffling through the grocery store with a latte on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

As I write this, I'm sitting in a new independent coffee shop. I discovered it a few weeks ago and I'm here today for the first time. I ordered a double espresso and it was way too large, tasted watered down and was served in a generic Styrofoam cup. I'm a person who appreciates proper service, so I hate to see anything served in Styrofoam. I also ordered a plain bagel with cinnamon cream cheese (which I don't really like, but they were out of plain cream cheese). The bagel was obviously purchased at Sam's Club - thin, tasted like white bread, entirely unimpressive. The cream cheese was sweet and sticky like cake icing. Even the music here is awful, mostly '80's dance music and ballads. I won't be returning. The point, however, is that this family-owned shop would not exist if not for Starbucks. These people opened this place because they love coffee and they thought (however wrongly) that they could operate a fantastic coffee shop. Even though I'm not enjoying it, their success remains to be seen. Without Starbucks, this shop and many others like it would not exist at all. For all the successful independent coffee shops in the US, we owe Starbucks a debt of gratitude for turning Americans on to the joys of better coffee.

TravelinMatt:

You can't deny its importance in the evolution of coffee culture in the United States. Without the explosive popularity of Starbucks, there would be only a fraction of the small, independently-owned coffee shops that exist today. These small business owners are capitalizing on the America's still fairly new craziness for the high-quality caffeine fix.

If not for Starbucks, most of us would still be making Folgers crystals at home and drinking whatever's warm from the office coffee machine. We would not even have the option of shuffling through the grocery store with a latte on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

For all the successful independent coffee shops in the US, we owe Starbucks a debt of gratitude for turning Americans on to the joys of better coffee.

I don't mean to sound like some independent cafe loving elitist, but I think you give Starbucks far too much credit here. The "gourmet coffee" fad really took off in the early/mid 90's, well before Starbucks was the big market leader. I was in high school and college at this time and I remember going to "the coffeehouse" was the big thing even in suburban N.H. (when we couldn't score booze anyway) There were tons of articles about the new coffee trend even then, and it wasn't really seen as a Starbucks thing, more of a Seattle thing.

When Starbucks started taking off it was already clear that there was a big market for cafes. Of course they did a lot to expand this market but they didn't exactly invent it. More like they saw a large growth potential and managed to latch on to it better than the other cafe chains. But if Starbucks didn't exist most of us would probably be getting our lattes at Seattle's Best or Caribou or Peets. I doubt we'd be making instant coffee.

If you don't believe me, look at a similar change - the explosion of good American beers. No one brewery dominates the market, and chains don't play the role for bars that they do for cafes. But you can walk into almost any bar and get much better beer than you could 20 years ago. I don't see why the same couldn't have happened for coffee without Starbucks.

Btw, you need to find a better independent cafe. Styrofoam cups in this age?? Who ever heard of such a thing...

Check out the history of SB and you'll see the OP is pretty accurate. No, SB was never the only coffee house, but they did legitimately bring the latte to the States in the 1980s. They were well on their way to expanding nationwide by the early 90s. There were a few markets (Boston being one, as I recall) where there were well-established local chains they bought out rather than go head-to-head. Everywhere else, they were close enough to being first that they didn't worry about competitors.

Really? I have a hard time believing that most of us would be "drinking Folger's crystals" if it weren't for Starbucks.

I don't dispute that Starbucks was the clear winner in the cafe business, but the OP makes it sound like there would be nothing without them. To me, that's like saying that if it weren't for MS Office we wouldn't be using word processors and spreadsheets. I really don't think it's realistic. Even if you took Starbucks out of the picture I still think there would have been a steady expansion of cafes and gourmet coffee. Slower, perhaps, but I don't think the difference would be orders of magnitude.

Granted, it's hard to debate a "what if?". That's why I made the analogy to beer. The quality of American beer in your average bar has gone way up in the last 20 years or so. This happened without one brand dominating to the extent that Starbucks does today for coffee. Part of it was that people's tastes changed.

Starbucks had 165 stores nationwide in 1992 (http://www.magazineusa.com/us­/info/show.aspx?unit=originals­&doc=33).
There was a lot more hype about the cafe trend in those days than would be due solely to a chain of that size.

I agree that SBX has done a great service to the appreciation of coffee in America. Now, of course, it is middle-of-the-road to even bad in comparison to the product many cafes are serving. With little effort, folks in urban areas, can get much better coffee. It think it is time to credit SBX for educating the customer, but also to "move on" from obsessing over SBX.

I saw a show on TV about the evolution of coffee which made it sound like Starbucks was not so much a fad as a long overdue evolution of coffee tastes.

They say back in the 50s percolated non-Arabica coffee was so consistently bad it had a stunting effect on coffee popularity in America. Folger's crystals were even worse, if you can imagine that. Anyone remember Taster's Choice ? It succeeded because brewed coffee was terrible as well back then.

Meanwhile, the espresso machine was invented in Italy, which is (probably) why it zoomed in popularity over there after WWII.

It was a matter of the American consumer, conditioned to see coffee as nothing more than a mass consumer product, being educated to coffee as a discriminating product.

It also had something to do with simple supply and demand. Growers switched to quality coffee beans, and are still doing so, because commodity prices for coffee are low. The only way to make much money is grow something pricey and exotic.

What this implies is Starbucks was just waiting to happen. The brand itself may have done something to educate consumers, but the popularity of coffee was inevitable.