So are you saying that the majority of Americans who drink coffee at home use something other than instant? Honestly I find that very difficult to believe.

To be honest based on your previous posts I don't think you are in a position to offer any comment on coffee culture in Australia because your opinion is so far off the mark.

As for your friends who you were visiting with not being able to show you a place to get coffee except Starbuck's I have no answer.....they weren't by any chance international students where they? Reason I ask is that the only people I ever saw at Starbuck's were international (usually from Asia) students.

I can report the same thing about Starbucks in Melbourne. Not a surprise that the few outlets that survived the recent cull were mainly in the CBD/Swanston St area where international student accomodation tends to be concentrated. With the decline of Starbucks here, I hope they eventually discover the local, indie cafes than start migrating to Hudsons or Gloria Jeans... Now why do I feel like petitioning uni to incorporate some sort of coffee crawl for future international student orientations.

Obviously you were not looking hard enough. Coffee in Australia is some of the best in the world if not the very best. Immigration has its positive points and a large influx of Italians, Greeks and to a certain extent even French has ensured that Australians know what good coffee tastes like.

One really has to wonder whether you have even tasted great coffee.

For those of you in London, can I strongly suggest you try a shop called "Flat White" in Soho. Details via the following link:

http://www.flat-white.co.uk/

Fantastic coffee to say the least especially in a city where they are only just beginning to get some decent coffee!

I believe that's the place BiziBB mentioned above; the Fairfax papers even had a feature of it on Sunday:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/food--...516646066.html

I look forward to checking it out when I visit the UK, I suspect it'd be a refreshing change from Costa. Though am personally not so sure about the Vegemite. *memories of being force fed the stuff as a little kid...*

My (very general) advice... on asking where to find a 'good' cafe - this is because if I was asked by an American (only an American), I might first tell them where to find the SBs.

I would prefer to point them toward a cafe known for better than average product, rather than 'consistent' with their usual USA drink.

When in Rome...

Visiting Sydney and drinking Starbucks and instant coffee () is a travesty of Australian coffee culture (and I am sorry for coffee lovers to suffer it).
To generalise that experience to the coffee market is indeed misleading.
QF009's links above (page 4) are a good starting point to learn about the trend of consumption from instant (robusta) to espresso (arabica) beans, as Aussies took up espresso-style coffee over the past couple of decades. ^

Put me down as one of those statistics Starbuck's doesn't want to see.

Ever since I discovered Panera's coffee along with fast, friendlier service, I haven't been back to Starbucks. It's been 8 months now.

I believe that poster may have been staring at the sky, and/or was heavily intoxicated. Anyone that can't find at least semi-reasonable real coffee in any city in Australia....ends sentence there.

As a 'first post', just my 2 cents here, but an interesting observation at work (Melbourne CBD in this case) - the "instant-coffee dispensers" in all the break-areas are literally untouched on my floor (and I have no reason to believe it different on the other 34 floors), with staff bringing in their own coffee plungers - and on my floor, even personal espresso machines - to use in the break out area (deemed OH&S risk to have espresso machine at one's desk!).

Go into the lifts at break or at lunch, and watch every second person with a steaming latte cup from the local espresso bar.

Equally, watch all the local coffee outlets and espresso bars queued up with staff from the floor above, whom, it would seem, rather fork-out the cash for decent coffee, rather than utilise what workmates describe as 'free'-but-barely-palatable instant.

What does that say for our coffee culture?

(And I don't even drink hot coffee!)

This mirrors my experience living in both MEL and SYD. The only time I ever ventured to use the stuff in the office kitchen was when pulling all nighters to get some work out the door and using instant coffee as a cheap and available caffeine fix.

But to be honest it makes sense if they have come from Asia there is no ingrained coffee culture (lets assume there is one in Australia for a minute) only starbucks which is kind of like going to Pizza Hut and saying that's Italian Culture, so when they come to Australia they think the same applies there.

A lot of young people in Asia I have noticed from my own travels want to emulate their western peers but don't know quite how so when they are mass-marketed an image like Starbucks they jump on board.

Did someone also say upthread they at Starbuck's they put 6 (six) shots of espresso in a coffee....is that the coffee drinkers equivalent of a binge drinking culture?

A good friend of mine who's heavily involved with Starbucks in Taiwan mentioned that their bread and butter are the large American born Taiwanese population who visit their folks in Taiwan over long summer holidays, and the even bigger group - local Taiwanese who look up to the American born Taiwanese and try to emulate them. How much of that is truth I personally can't verify, but Taiwan seems to be one of v few places where Starbucks is actually booming so what he claims isn't totally devoid of substance.

I can't recall the post now but I remember someone saying that they have to put extra shots into Starbucks coffee to ensure that they taste the coffee. I know a few people who put an extraordinary amount of shots into their coffee to "feel the hit." I personally am just fine with the standard, as I find anything more to be a bit too full on and I'd rather spread out my caffeine intake throughout the day. Plus I see coffee as more of something to be enjoyed rather than some sort of necessity I have to live off. Though like I said in the other thread I do get grumpy without my regular doses of (soy) latte.

If a 'drink' has six shots, no wonder it is huge and costs 2-3x the price of a coffee. Not to mention the fat and sugar content if it is a dairy-based concoction.

These 'drinks' must be sustaining some of the international stores, especially where there is already a 'strong coffee culture', aka a competitive and well developed market for espresso-style coffees.

I believe there is a place for both, even though I am not a customer of SBs, because shopping malls (aka Westfield and a few others) tend to include a few if not most/all of the chains/franchises.

Then it's just a matter of whether the brand and the marketing is enough - or if the product makes customers loyal regulars.

One more thing: US FT readers may be shocked that McDonald's Australian management pioneered McCafe as a separate 'store within a store' entity in the 1990s, well before the international expansion of SBs to this part of the world.

I think the Australian CEO was recruited to the #2 job worldwide after that.
My point is that even chain operations, if managed within the country, can adapt to the local market better than those remotely operated - if it is a competitive market.

Lots of tweaks were applied since then, to attract the young adult (no kids) market, amongst others, so McDonalds is into maybe the seventh generation of its cafe products.
Now the ads tell of a 'stronger, smoother' arabica blend.

One word: Localisation!
Enough of Oz Biz 101!

So when are they actually going to close the 600 Starbucks that were announced? The one I go to on my way to work (I have to walk 20 minutes and there's one right in the middle, the only place so I stop 2-3 times a week) was announced as "to be closed" and it's still open. Have any of them closed yet?

Um, ever been to Vietnam, Singapore or Malaysia? There is a coffee culture there.