Starbucks

Good place good product good people at this particular store. However as of January 13th Starbucks command headquarters in Seattle has dictated customers will no longer be allowed to do anything but use the drive by windows or come in to pick up and leave; local store personnel have no say in this. This may all smack of corporate attorneys trying to ensure they can wash their hands of anything having to do with this damnable covid19 virus. As of Friday April 22, actually for several weeks now, you CAN enter this store and sit down and enjoy your drink. Masks are optional. You will see people who are alone and people in groups of two or three or four.... So it looks like things have returned to normal.

Overall, a nice enough place to stop in for a coffee. However... The wait in the drive-thru tends to be very long. Some days the line of cars snakes around the back and side of the building. Be patient. They seem to have high staff turnover. Not a big deal, but some of the new people don't seem to have enough practice making standard drinks. I haven't complained, but I suspect they are substituting 2% milk for whole milk in the iced coffees. I know what 2% tastes like and looks like in coffee, and when I ask for whole milk, my coffee arrives very dark and tastes like it has 2% in it. Not a big deal, but still, don't lie to customers. Just be honest and say you are out of whole milk. The young baristas are mostly OK- friendly, quick, and so on. It's the older baristas who seem to have a sense of entitlement. As in, "I have worked at Starbucks for years, so a mere customer has no right to question me." If the older baristas (as in, certain middle-aged women) make your drink, and they don't get it right or they take literally 15 minutes to make it (when there are only 2 or 3 customers in the place), they rarely apologize, and sometimes even comment to the effect that "it's not a problem. I made the drink the way you ordered it." Not cool. Finally, and but quite importantly, the volume of music in this Starbucks location is earsplitting. I mean, seriously loud, as if you are in a bar and someone is blasting the jukebox. I don't know why Brunswick Starbucks thinks this music is essential to coffee drinking, but whatever. I don't know how anyone can converse with friends or even hear themselves think in such an atmosphere. Worse, they don't normally play the standard Starbucks corporate background tunes, but barista playlists. This includes grating rap songs, vulgar language, and such. Completely inappropriate for anything resembling a "family" environment. Why is this Starbucks' new image? I am at a loss.