Maybe I’m a little too late to the party, but I’ve recently really started to like Starbucks. I’ve never been super into caffeine; to be honest, I’ve actually been somewhat scared of it. I have seen plenty of people that seem to have become completely dependent on caffeine, either through coffee or energy drinks, to get through the mornings and the rest of the day. And although I don’t consider myself a natural morning person that can wake up instantly without the need of anything, I know that if my day doesn’t start off productive, the entire day usually tends to follow the same way, which is usually enough to motivate me. However, ever since starting my quarantine routine of going to bed really late, it has been getting harder and harder to wake up. So clearly, I then decided to drink coffee during quarantine, right? Not quite. I was, and still am, a little nervous when it comes to being addicted to caffeine.  

So what makes me like Starbucks? During winter break, my girlfriend and I would meet up to watch movies at night once a week. Every time it snowed, we would order a hot drink from a random chain to make it more cozy. First, it was Dunkin’, where we each got mint hot chocolate with some donuts (I would get a glazed and she would get a chocolate glazed, so clearly I made better decisions). Then we went to McDonald’s, where we got two McFlurries, a hot chocolate and an oatmeal. The oatmeal was on accident (would not recommend), as I was trying to ask if they had oat milk for the hot chocolate but the person working misheard me and I was too embarrassed to change the order as she did not seem like she was in the best mood. 

Then, finally, we got to Starbucks. My girlfriend ordered a dirty chai latte and she told me to get a white mocha latte. We also decided to get a slice of lemon pound cake and a coffee cake. And wow was it good… I decided to get Starbucks again later that week. This time I got the iced tea lemonade. I was pleasantly surprised as I found a new go-to drink that I could potentially use for energy that I really enjoyed (tea does not scare me as much as coffee does).

So was that why I started really liking Starbucks? Mostly, but there’s more. Recently, in one of my classes, we were learning about some of the great leaders of the business world and what makes them so great. One of the cases that we read was Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks. I’m not sure whether his story is well known and I just don’t read the news, but Howard Schultz’s company values strongly align with his own personal story. When he was younger, Schultz’s father got into an accident and got laid off from work without health insurance. This caused hardships for his family and changed Schultz’s viewpoint on the world. When Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks during its early years, he made sure to provide health insurance to his workers. Starbucks became the first company to provide health insurance to qualifying workers that worked part time. Knowing that a leader like that is running a company I enjoy definitely makes me more inclined to go to the place for their service.

This leads me to the real reason why I brought all this up: for my first semester at Brandeis where I enjoyed Starbucks, Brandeis has closed the Starbucks at the Farber library. I completely understand the reason for shutting Starbucks down during the pandemic, but similar to McDonald’s getting rid of some of their menu that I really enjoyed during the coronavirus pandemic, I’m still going to be sad and craving it. I hope it comes back next year so I can have one year of Starbucks being a quick walk away during my college years, but then again, it is likely not on people’s priority list of things that should change come next fall.