For the last four or five years I’ve been waking myself up with Starbucks Instant, easily the equal of the finest fresh-brewed coffees and hands down the greatest tasting instant I’ve ever known. Particularly those packets of Dark Italian Roast and French Roast. I routinely take them to France because you can’t buy them there. But you can buy them in any Starbucks outlet in any state, and you used to be able to buy them in my local West Hollywood Pavilions, both on the regular coffee shelves and on mini-shelves in the independent Starbucks cafe within the store.
But starting about three weeks ago, those wood-colored cardboard containers of Italian and French Roast, which offer 12 plastic packets for $9.95, began to disappear, and in their place I began to notice these icky white-and-violet containers offering 8 packets for $6.99. I recoiled in disgust. These newbies seem designed for girly-girls. The prices are roughly proportional but why discontinue my old favorites? They’ve been a staple of my life. Why are you taking them away from me, Pavilions? Or are the Starbucks guys at fault?