The Year in Food 2007

Starbucks Hits a Mc–Land Mine

The mocha Frappuccino’s reign of frothy supremacy is crashing like a deprived caffeine junkie. In the last fiscal year, Starbucks’s stock dropped 23 percent, mainly due to the coffee maker’s tactics of plopping cookie-cutter stores on every corner—14,396, at last count. Compounding the java vendor’s tribulations, a Consumer Reports taste test ranked McDonald’s Premium coffee ahead of Starbucks’s, citing lower cost and better flavor than the Seattle company’s bitter, wallet-emptying brew. Meanwhile, McDonald’s took a page from its upscale competitor, opening a new line of McCafé restaurants. They use real plates and stainless steel silverware, are furnished with leather chairs and comfy couches, and sell gourmet lattes and cappuccinos alongside frosting-topped cake with the chain’s usual legendary efficiency. Up next: the Big Mac–and-Americano Value Meal. —Joshua M. Bernstein

POST A COMMENT |10 Comments

COMMENT

  • rogue brewing company for life! and of course long live the IPA!

  • Great review. Very enlightening. You guys do a fantastic job. Keep up the great work!

  • Wow, one paragraph of article per click. Four ads (three visa, one text for CNet at the top) per click that I noticed.

    Four ads per paragraph. Yuck.

  • The FDA actually got 34,000 comments in support of the current higher standards of chocolate. The current word is that the FDA has rejected the "safe and suitable substitutions" of vegetable fats portion of GMA proposal as it was based on the false assumption that "consumers had formed no expectations." (34,000 comments proved that we did have some expectations about what was in our food.)

    ...+READ

    The FDA actually got 34,000 comments in support of the current higher standards of chocolate. The current word is that the FDA has rejected the "safe and suitable substitutions" of vegetable fats portion of GMA proposal as it was based on the false assumption that "consumers had formed no expectations." (34,000 comments proved that we did have some expectations about what was in our food.)

    http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/category/fda-COLLAPSE

  • Wild salmon are being threatened in a more fundamental way than 'grain barges on the Snake' (a threat that I, a denizen of the Columbia and friend to fisherfolk have never heard mentioned). There are big out-of-state energy speculators who are about to build out heavy industrial sites in the delicate estuaries where the salmoids live. Once the baby salmon have to cope with the initial dredging;...+READ

    Wild salmon are being threatened in a more fundamental way than 'grain barges on the Snake' (a threat that I, a denizen of the Columbia and friend to fisherfolk have never heard mentioned). There are big out-of-state energy speculators who are about to build out heavy industrial sites in the delicate estuaries where the salmoids live. Once the baby salmon have to cope with the initial dredging; the heated, treated water being spewed into their nursery; or being sucked into the ballast water for LNG shipments, what happens upriver won't matter one bit.

    btw, the day-to-day fight over wild salmon happens in meetings where commercial fishers and sport fishers are set up to fight each other for a dwindling allowed catch while the endangered, protected sea lions eat all the salmon they can get their flippers on and the energy carpetbaggers smile and pay for the right to kill lots of salmon babies. That's where the fish fight is.-COLLAPSE

  • foodperv! You're really earning your name here!

  • i like this one VEGAN-sexuals
    i guess oral sex is out cause that's eating meat eitherway

  • Personally, I love foie gras and have no plans to stop serving it on any menu!

  • For christ's sake. Enough with the sliders!

  • You know what? Who cares whether he caught the fucking fish or not! As far as I'm concerned he as a Chef is brilliant.