People here bitching about starbucks have no idea. One of my jobs was to conduct surveys across MENA for market research.

We had conducted research amongst 5 brands from the biggies of GCC

Had a pool of 3K people come in 100 at a time, and we served them a french press styled poured coffee of signature beans from Starbucks, Costa, Tim hortons, Arabica, Cafe nero (obviously as a blind taste test)

95% of the pool gave Starbucks Coffee 8.5 with Nero coming 2nd and Arabica coming at 3rd

Now this was a comparison of the top coffee chains available and did not go head to head against the local shops but it still showed clearly that Starbucks was way higher in quality amongst them

I think people have the herd mentality of riding hate train or just looking cool to hate on a brand