Coffee Number 14

***Getting through the backlog***

Starbucks
Shop 8
Midtown Plaza
194 Swanston St
Melbourne VIC 3000

Gingerbread frappucino, half coffee base, half cream base


Cold frappucinos (or frappucini?) on hot days always remind me of holidays in Malaysia. Aah, memories. It was hot on 26th of October, and I had an hour between work and meeting some lovely bloggers for dinner.

Me: A small decaf gingerbread frappucino please.
Starbucks girl: No worries… well it won’t really be decaf, we’ll do half coffee base, half cream base, ok?
Me: …blank look… Sure.

Oh man it was good! Loved the gingerbread flavour, not too sweet and super refreshing.
And for someone who officially hates Starbucks, I seem to be drinking quite a bit of it.

Looking for your Starbucks fix?

If the sudden closure of so many Starbucks stores has got you longing for your Venti-Oreo-Frappuccino or your Grande-Skim-White-Mocha, or you're an American tourist who just wants "my double-tall-latte, people!", here are the 5 locations that will remain in Melbourne.


295 Swanston Street, Melbourne 3000 (Yup, the big one full of Asian students between Lonsdale and Latrobe St)
674 Glenferrie Centre Shop 1 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, 3122 (Yup, the small one full of Asian students near Swinburne University, and full of rich kids from the high concentration of nearby private schools)
Melbourne Airport (No points for guessing why that one remains)
207 Collins St, Melbourne 3000 (It's not in a particularly student-y location, but I'm gonna guess that the tourists around this hotel/theatre area keep it going).
Shop 8, Midtown Plaza, 194 Swanston St, Melbourne (Again, in the heart of Asian-student town)



And for interest, here's a great article from a Singaporean living in Melbourne up on Melbourne Metblogs.

Melbourne's falling newspaper standards leave me feeling "depresso"

**Not strictly a "Coffee of the Week", but definitely coffee-related**

That's a pic of me, back in wintry Germany, drinking a nice warm white mocha at Starbucks Viernheim.


In yesterday's Age newspaper there were a few articles about Starbucks. If you haven't yet heard, they're closing 70% of their Australian stores. For all affected Starbucks' employees, this must seriously suck. However, what caught my eye about one of the articles wasn't the big economic news, or even the insight into Melbourne's coffee culture. It was the hilariously bad title and captions:


Bean and gone, espresso turns to depresso (Get it, get it??) by Michael Shmith (sic)

The accompanying photo is of a young person drinking a Starbucks coffee, with the caption:
"A long black day at Starbucks".

Ba-dum-tush.

Get it? Because a long black is a type of coffee, but "a long black day" also means that Starbucks is having a tough time. Clever huh??? Not!

We were cracking up yesterday reading the papers over breakfast. It seems that people are paid to write what is essentially the journalistic equivalent of a dad joke.

More Starbucks-related articles available here.