Take Starbucks in Israel for example. We Israelis like our coffee STRONG. As middle-easterners we also had a coffee drinking culture before Startbucks arrived.
Instead of fitting in to the existing culture it kept making weak coffee… the kind Americans like…
(Startbucks makes 2/3 milk, 1/3 espresso… we like 2/3 espresso, 1/3 milk. In fact, the only time I got a real good cup of coffee when I was in the states was when the waitress apologized for making it “too dry”)

McDonalds, on the other hand, quickly adapted to the local mentality and replaced the tiny samples they called burgers with big ones… we like meat

I agree with your point Ben. It is brand and perception.

I’m hooked.

I’ll agree with Adrian that coffee culture use to be great, they still have the culture but no longer serve decent coffee. They are obviously doing something right though as you can glance in their riccarton cafe and see ten people for every one at starbucks across the road.

Starbucks was responsible for bringing expressos and cappuccinos to the USA, so we should not knock them too much.

I happen to feel that they over cook (burn) their coffee so that it needs milk or milk-like products to counter the bitterness. This means they sell more of the much more profitable drinks with loads of milk than expressos and americanos.
These days it is all just too expensive in what has finally been confirmed as a USA recession. Stsarbucks has closed/is closing stores all over the world as a result of soft demand.

But drinking coffee has such an appeal to it and some of it’s not in the cup. I don’t know whether this explains anything but… The coffee cart in Cathedral Square serves one of the best coffees in Christchurch. I put that down to the love that he puts into each cup. Coffee Culture pre-franchise used to be an awesome coffee too [but no longer such a sure-fire hit], C4 under your place was fabulous the day you bought it, the following week it missed that pinnacle somehow. I used to use a Café I’d done the branding for, they were awesome. They used Laffare beans! I figure I loved the way I never had to order and they knew my name. Illy at Little River also used to be awesome, but that got spoiled with new owners and a wife that had left.
This rambling only seems to concrete the idea for me that it’s not about how recently the grind was done or the other coffee snobbery that goes on, but about the relationship that you -|- barista -|- the machine -|- and the coffee have with each other.