An offline coffee morning

Oh, I wish I was typing this in Starbucks.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I like being in Starbucks. But if I was typing this in one it would mean that I'd have cracked the technological magic that is wi-fi. And I haven’t. Yet.

So, once again, I’m typing this in a hot internet café.

It’s not that I don’t have a laptop, I do. After consultation with my technical advisor, Mr Sloane in London, I picked up a new Toshiba on Saturday and naively anticipated a new life of unlimited wi-fi in coffee shops. I was going to be the culinary equivalent of SJP. Albeit larger and without the wardrobe or being splashed across a bus. I was going to be JAM in Food in Auckland City. Sometimes you need to make your intials work for you.

So this morning I took my laptop to Starbucks so we could get acquainted. Except it didn’t quite work out. It wasn’t until after I'd handed over $4.20 for a flat-white (my favourite café, The Strawberry Alarm Clock a few doors down, does a great one for $3.50, but no wi-fi) that I learned in order to hook-up to the wireless world, one must already have a Telecom account. Which I don’t. However, Starbucks could sell me an access code for $10. How long would that last for? I wondered. Around 45 minutes apparently, “depending on the speed”. The speed of 45 minutes?

Whatever, it was a ludicrous deal. The downtown internet cafés are two bucks an hour. OK, the machines are slow (long minutes, presumably) but if you accidentally tip your drink into the keyboard at least it’s their wear and tear. Oh! I can’t believe I just said that.

So I cart the paid-for coffee – hating it already - and laptop wrapped in Sunday’s newspaper (a carrying case is also on my to-do list) back to a square table, wishing I was in the Strawberry Alarm Clock, which is fun and exciting and they give you plastic animals to take to your table so they know where to bring your food to. Yesterday I was the horse and I loved it!

But today I’m in Starbucks and there was nothing for it but to plough through the tanker of characterless coffee and wonder when I would finally see the bottom of it. During which, I pondered the question that always baffles me, which is: Why is Starbucks coffee so expensive? Or, more to the point, why do people pay for it?

I hadn’t been to a Starbucks for about two years though can remember the last time – it was the one in Golden Square in London in my lunch-break. When they told me how much they wanted for a latté I felt like I’d been hit in the face with a sack of single-estate Arabica. Or is it Robusta? Either way, I’d had to borrow some extra change from a colleague. That’s how unprepared I was for it.

So allow me to share with you the reason why Starbucks charge what they do for their coffee. It’s because the beans are “always fresh”. Once they go out of date, Starbucks simply won’t use them. They’ll throw them away or give them to charity.
Me: “Gosh, does that happen a lot then?”
Them: “Oh! Yes! All the time!”

Well why on earth do they order so much of the damn stuff, then, only to give it away? I might not be in the coffee business but surely if you bank on selling all your stock, rather than chucking half of it away, you could charge a bit less for it. Maybe?

But the background music was making me too drowsy for further questioning so I smiled politely and returned to my seat to peruse my surrounding environment, which consisted of middle-aged tourists who had probably spent their entire holiday in the same suburban shopping street. Out of sight somewhere, a small child sounded like it was torturing another one.

Oh, another benefit of shopping at Starbucks is that you can make any special coffee requests to the person making it right in front of your very eyes. More foam, less foam, hell no foam, even. Remember, it’s YOUR coffee!

Suddenly suspicious, I started to eat banana from my bag in case there was a drug in the coffee that was about to make me get up and buy a muffin.

Just as the pointless background song in French started washing over me like an over-extracted, milky latté, the woman who’d served me walked over and presented me with a FREE Starbucks Beverage coupon. Apparently to make up for paying over the odds for something that wasn’t that great (I can’t remember her exact words) without the technical perk I’d specifically hoped for.

“Ahhaa!” I thought. So this is how people become regular customers. It’s an American mind-machine. Pah! Thank goodness I’d seen through that one. I grabbed it from her with thanks, then gulped down the rest of the coffee, suddenly desperate to get on with the rest of my day.

I can’t remember whether I got as far as the door or just glanced through the window as I rose from my seat, but suddenly I realised that the heavens have opened and it’s raining monstrously. The kind of rain that dents car roofs and without an umbrella causes head injuries. To imagine what it would do to a laptop wrapped in a newspaper... well, frankly, it wasn’t worth imagining, so I sat back down on the edge of my seat, submitted to some more paralyzing music and marvelled at the efficient air-con.

Then I got up and ordered another tanker of coffee. Well! At least it was free. And like I said, I wish I was still there.