Dunkin Donuts:
Me: I’d like a large iced coffee with milk, no sugar, light on the ice, please.
Counter worker (goes away and comes back): Here is your iced coffee, sir.
Starbucks:
Me: I’d like a large, I mean, grande iced coffee with milk, no sugar, light on the ice, please.
Order-taking barista passes order onto drink-making barista. I go stand with other customers huddled near the pub table waiting as each drink is eked out of the various gadgets. The barista places an obviously iced drink on the table.
Barista (calls out): Iced … mumble, mumble … no dolce, two percent.
Me (waiting to see if it’s someone else’s drink and then approaching hesitantly lest I be singled out as a Starbucks noob): Is this an iced coffee with milk, no sugar?
Barista (sighs): Yes.
And that is the essential difference between Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks.
N.B. My sister-in-law works at Starbucks and so this is just a gentle ribbing of Starbucks. Obvously, I do enjoy their tasty beverages on occasion. I am, after all, a coffee snob.
Photo from Flickr user thebittenword.com used with permission via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Simple is good, Where I live in CA there are no Dunkin Donuts so I just make coffee at home.
Classic example of life is funny.
Bob
That is hysterical! I agree 100 percent! I have avoided Starbuck’s of late… why pay more?!
Two more differences: the price and the bitterness factor. It’s why I call that place the “OPBC Co.” *
* The Over-Priced Bitter Coffee Company.
;-D
Perhaps the readers from outside the Dunkin orbit would
enjoy this commercial. I think the song is by They Might Be Giants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2y_GwKzxck
I think this story is somewhat fudged, Dom.
They would not put milk in your iced coffee at Starbucks, rather you would have to put it in yourself.
Sure, they would have milk in some of their other offerings, but not iced coffee.
This is why I actually prefer Starbucks because DD will over-milk the coffee.
Maybe if you’d put that DD and Sbux money in the bank you could afford a house.
Tom: I told Melanie that I call commenters like you”farts in an elevator,” i.e. humorless people who can’t smile at a funny anecdote but who have to turn everything into a personal attack.
Yes, perhaps if we denuded life of every simple pleasure and lived the most spartan, gray existence we could afford to buy a massive mansion in which to live our gray and humorless life. Perhaps that is the path you took.
In fact, I don’t usually get my coffee from either vendor but because my employer, as they prepared to move, took out the coffee machines in which we usually prepared our coffee I was forced to go out and buy it. Oh, but for $2.50, I could have had a house.
As for your accusation of my less-than-truthfulness, in this Starbucks they indeed put the milk in my iced coffee. You can ask my sister-in-law, who as I said works at a Starbucks, whether sometimes the milk is added to iced coffee by the barista. In any case, at this one this time they did.
Dom, while I agree in principle, I have to admit that Starbuck’s makes better lattes; and, their Frapuccino’s are so good, they must be evil.
Me here, back from the dead… still unemployed…
Adabolendam… Yes, Starbuck’s evil… DD good.
For proof, see this photo from the Dyke March, part of Boston Gay Pride week: http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen/08b/pride_week/dyke_march/sister_m4769.jpg
and then see who one of the corporate sponsors for the event is (note: you won’t find DD here): http://www.bostonpride.org/sponsors.php
As the aforementioned employee of Starbucks, I’ll add my two cents.
We do not add milk to your hot coffee for you.
But I daily add milk to iced coffee for our customers. Along with sweetener of whatever persuasion they ask for.
And Dom, I’m a little mystified at the complexity they put you through for your coffee. At my store, we just call it an iced coffee with milk.
I’m not surprised. Brighton is a bit more pretentious than Dallas.
Thanks for chiming in, although Tom apparently used a fake email address so I don’t know if he’ll be back to read your response.