Tea vs Coffee: a never-ending feud

I don’t drink coffee I take tea my dear – so Sir Sting tells us. And he likes his toast done on one side apparently – funny that. So Sting may have been An Englishman in New York but is the Big Apple as different from the Big Smoke as it used to be? Well, yes but we do seem to have adopted the decidedly American trend of coffee-shop culture. Do we have the TV show Friends to thank for that? We hope not – we prefer to think that it’s because a firm as large as Starbucks decided to explore cosmopolitan London through its multinational population.

But does the Breakfast Tea homeland still prefer drinking tea than coffee? The oldest and most famous coffee chain doesn’t agree. Starbucks doesn’t accept the old English tradition and makes efforts to engage new coffee drinkers. How? With a new coffee experience. For free. Since 1998, when it arrived in UK, the American chain has tried to be an affordable luxury – Starbucks now offers customers free refills!

The future is uncertain, but never give up! Even if the present economic crisis hits your breakfast table. In the last year Starbucks has fired many of its employees in USA and is closing many stores across the world, but as it has to get used the company try to limit the problems. The latest news say that Starbucks will close 600 stores in the United States and 61 (of the 84) in Australia. Also in UK the coffee company has recorded its first loss as a public company, surviving a terrible week, caused by an international halt of revenue growth. Starbucks was one of the most successful businesses of all the world, and it wants to survive to the big economic crisis and save its 670 shops in Britain.

And you can like it or not, love the coffee or not, but Starbucks is a good example of a successful business in times of trouble. We are also here to cover these stories for you – are Londoners rejecting coffee culture now?