McDonald’s Coffee Beats Starbucks: Official

Consumer Reports does a comparison that will open your eyes: A personal reaction

We don’t know about you, dear reader, but to us, whether writing, editing, or even double-clicking the QuarkXPress icon, work just doesn’t happen unless we have a little of Vitamin C (that’s caffeine, of course) coursing through our body. The delivery vehicle, of course, being that wonderful black brew.

You see, we meant to double-click on the Photoshop icon. But we digress.

When it comes to coffee and we want what we percieve is value for money spent, we are more likely to find the sign of the Melusine…Starbucks (that’s not a mermaid on the symbol, but once again, we digress). We figure that with Starbucks’ reputation for quality and chain-standardization, if we go for a simple house coffee we’ll be getting some of the best–or at least most acceptable–coffee that you can obtain. But lately, when we sip that magic brew…well, lets just say that’s a taste that stays with you, and not in the good way. We didn’t think that you could burn coffee.

Allow us a bit of foreshadowing when we say that…well, we’re not lovin’ it.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we found that Consumer Reports magazine taste-tested four national brands of to-go coffee; Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, and Burger King, and found that–surprise–McDonalds had the best of all, in price and flavor? It’s true; the comparison is short, snappy and readable at the link you just read past, you sleepyhead you.

To put it even more succinctly, while McDonalds coffee was cited as flawless if unexciting, Starbucks was:

Which pretty much matched our last experience with it, and was (at the prices they were citing) twenty cents more expensive to boot.

While giving McDonalds coffee the highest marks in taste and price in the four brands tried, the opinion ended on a damning-with-faint-praise note; CR suggests that you make your own coffee and call it something special.

Now, where did we leave that Photoshop icon?