How Coffee Became a Joke

The crisis at Starbucks is a sign of our un-serious times

I come from a family of extreme coffee drinkers.

I was literally imbibing coffee in the cradle. My mother kept a scrapbook where she listed my main interests at 12 months of age—mostly playing piano and biting strangers.

But when I was 16 months old, Mom added that toddler Ted likes to drink coffee.

Not much has changed since then.

My father started serving me cups of dark roast every morning around age seven or eight. I took to the habit readily. But even I understood this wasn’t normal.

In fourth grade, I decided to rebel.

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“Dad, I don’t think it’s healthy for me to drink this,” I declared one morning. “Kids shouldn’t drink coffee.”

My father stared me down while he thought it over. Then he passed judgment: “Children need something warm in their stomach before going to school.”

He wasn’t talking oatmeal.

Cup of coffee (photo by Julius Schorzman)

Of course, Pops simply preached what he practiced. The Gioia clan is like the Kneivels, except that we get jumpy with java not Harleys. Dad only had three stages in his day. He was either (1) drinking coffee, (2) had just finished drinking coffee, or (3) was brewing a fresh pot right now.

If my father felt restless in bed at night, he would actually get up to make more coffee. He claimed it helped him sleep. I don’t think he ever donated blood to the blood bank, but if he did it would be type C, flowing into the bag with the color and consistency of his favorite beverage.

Was he wrong?

I can give all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t have been drinking coffee as a child, but I can’t argue with the results.

I showed up at elementary school with my brain boiling on caffeine, and raced through multiplication tables and spelling bees like Usain Bolt leaving a burning building. I aced all the tests, and have to give Dad’s secret potion some of the credit.

Some will tell you that the Age of Enlightenment in Europe was caused by coffee imports. Voltaire and Rousseau and those other dudes were running on caffeine, just like me in fourth grade.

But it came at a cost.

By my teen years, I was seriously jonesing on joe. I drank ten cups a day, sometimes more. I even found a way to get coffee at high school, convincing workers to supply me with my necessary vice from the teacher’s cafeteria.

I had an outrageous coffee habit in my youth

I eventually got my habit under control. As part of my midlife crisis, I limited myself to four cups per day. I now survive on just two daily hits.

But don’t get fooled by my micro-dosing. I’m still dead serious about coffee.

Over the years, I’ve sought out the best roasts all around the world. I’ve savored my java on the island of Java itself, with the grounds still floating around in the steaming brew. I’ve sat at those famous Paris cafes, sourcing my high from the same espresso machines that fueled Sartre and Camus.

I’ve tried it all, from those crazy hot coffee can dispensers in Tokyo, to Alfred Peet’s humble coffee dispensary in Berkeley (with the master presiding), to actual Colombian in Bogotá and handpicked Kona on the plantations of Hawaii.

Mr. Prufrock has nothing on me. I’ve measured out my entire life in capacious coffee spoons—and make no apologies for it.

But this requires a proper level of gravitas. I don’t just slurp it down. I treat it as a ritual, conducted with mindfulness and reverence. You should do the same.

So I’ve watched with dismay as coffee got turned into a joke.

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I mention this in response to the crisis at Starbucks—which reported ugly financial results on Tuesday. Sales are down. Profits are down. Store traffic is down. Everything is down.

Here are some headlines from the last week.

This makes no kind of sense.

How can you lose when you’re selling an addictive substance? Even the most brain-cell-deprived stoner in your high school class eventually figured out how to deal.

When did they get so clueless in Seattle? I’ve heard many explanations.

Some complain that coffee got too expensive—and that’s true. Others will point to the declining quality of the Starbucks experience—and I can’t disagree. I’ve seen things go down in front of the barista straight out of the Battle of Stalingrad.

But the biggest problem is one Starbucks created.

They turned coffee into something ridiculous.

Every comedian now has a five-minute riff on coffee in their routines. In a day when it’s dicey making jokes about people, Starbucks comes to the rescue. Nobody gets offended when those silly beverages are jeered—they are the punchline that keeps on giving.

How did Starbucks become a laughingstock?

Maybe it started with selling a Pumpkin Spice Latte that had zero pumpkin in it. Whatever the reason, there’s something about this beverage that invites mockery—so much so that comedians have actually demanded a moratorium on pumpkin spice latte jokes.

That didn’t stop the drink from gaining a sizable hipster following. Those latte-swilling bros should have been a warning sign. But instead of reading the room, Starbucks pushed ahead with a host of other goofy drinks.

The most recent idiocy is the Oleato, a drink that mixes coffee and olive oil. Hey, I love both of those things separately, but putting them together is like mixing oil and….well, like mixing oil and coffee.

It gets worse. They want you to drink this dubious hybrid with enhancements. Starbucks recommends that you enjoy your Starbucks^® Blonde^® virgin olive oil coffee with Golden Foam®, infused with “notes of warm toffeenut and creamy oatmilk.”

To which I respond: Gag® Me® with a (trademarked) Spoon®!

I could fill up this whole article with absurd Starbucks drinks—from the purple-and-green Mermaid Frappuccino® to the bereft Cinderella Latte®, which turns into a pumpkin spice knockoff long before midnight. Where are those wicked stepsisters when we need them?

If you care about coffee like me, you can’t take the Starbucks brand seriously.

They lost interest in coffee long ago. They are now in the over-priced sugary snack (with lots of additives) business.

So it’s no surprise that people mock them.

Just holding a Starbucks cup in your hand is now a sign of shallow posturing. If you pay attention, you will see those coffee cups in countless satirical photos and illustrations.

Alas, I fear that this Starbucks fiasco is emblematic of a deeper malaise.

There’s a shortage of seriousness everywhere in society now. I’ll need to write about that in more detail at a later point. But so much is image-driven in our influencer culture nowadays, and so little is substance. Sometimes it feels like the whole country is slurping Frappucinos^® in Barbieland.

Maybe those goofy sugar-filled purple-and-green drinks are all we deserve.

I’m not sure that Starbucks can return from this mess. But I will do my part to restore the solemnity of coffee. No coffee beverage with a trademark sign^® will pass my lips.

Instead I’m gonna drink it hot, stinging, and black—the way God intended.

I invite you to join me. Maybe if we can make coffee serious again, we can fix the other frivolties too.