Snap On USA/marketing, we the techs, can do math...

[Toolhorder]

Exactly, and your jiberish has what to do with the OP comments???

Stick around and you'll get tired of the same way the threads turn in ******* matches about SO vs. everything else. It just gets old. Buy what you want let's move on.
Obviously when guys are comparing getting raped in the *** for buying snap-on the thread has de-railed. Nice that you focus on my comment as "jibbrish" though. Good call!

 

[route246]

Starbucks really displaced the local coffee and donut shop and basically went upscale from there. Those old donut shops usually brewed Farmer's Brothers or other commercial brand which was decent in its time. My sister-in-law is a nutritionist and has studied the food industry for decades. She assessed Starbucks as just being fast and consistent but they never tout their taste or quality. I have never seen a Starbucks ad touting quality. They tout the brand. They know their coffee is mostly average and I don't think they pretend to be upscale. The only thing upscale about the place is the decoration and ambiance of the stores. Other than that, pedestrian and average coffee quality abounds. Starbucks is Craftsman, good for many, not for all, consistent product. Your local boutique coffee roasting bistro (roast beans onsite) is Snap-on (without the 2x-4x pricing).

I'm not sure that you're really replying to my post directly, but:

Yes, agreed. I like Peet's a lot. Though I've never tried McD's coffee (haven't been to a McDonald's since I was a kid). My point is (and was) that Starbucks saturated the market -- almost everywhere -- and recalling what "coffee" was in the US before Starbucks (with the exceptions I already noted), they raised the bar. At least for expectations of what coffee could be. I'd also say that compared to the canned **** like Folgers and Yuban that people used to drink (and I suppose still do), Starbucks was and is far superior.

That said, if you grew up in New York or another big city with Italian (and other) immigrants, you knew what a good coffee could be way before Starbucks. But I don't think you could argue that the majority of Americans had this experience.


This is my point. Though I wouldn't call marketing a science - let alone a high science, if by high science you mean something like the "hard sciences," such as bio., chem, etc. I might be willing to think of it as an "soft" science like sociology, anthropology, or even econ.