Neither of my local* Starbii ever did award me the Customer of the Week free drinkathon pass, so now I don’t go there anymore.** But in case you still do go there, if you make them heat up their morning buns, they are tasty.
There. That’s it.
Oh wait: they also give their employees health benefits. But that’s probably preventative care re: employee absences due to excessive morning bun consumption, so that cancels itself out.
Of course, if you really want a morning bun, you should just get on your bike and go over to Tartine (on the corner of 18th and Guerrero), stand in line for a 15 minutes with the yoga moms and writers and ne’er do well trust funders and get a proper morning bun that is made by hand that very morning, is still warm and has little bits of shaved orange in it.
I mean, if you really loved morning buns that’s what you’d do. If you just have a crush and no commitment, go on ahead and stick with Starbucks. Whatever. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not upset. Really.
*By ‘local’ I mean the two within reaching radius of my apartment, not ‘local’ meaning…um…local. By that definition, we’d be talking about getting shunned by about 60 stores. It’s bad, but not that bad.
**Oh – and by ‘don’t go there’ I mean, not really, mostly, almost all the time…to write, I mean…not just for a drive-by coffee…I don’t even like their coffee, but yeah, I mean, sometimes, sure, I ‘go there’ if you want to take that in the strictest going there sense of the words, I mean, who doesn’t? Come on. You can’t not. They’re just there all the time, like that ex-boyfriend who’s kind of stalking you but is also sort of a nice guy and sometimes it’s just easier to hang out with him because he’s, like, right outside your door, than drag all the way across town to hang out with someone you like better. Who isn’t a stalker. Or whatever.
Displaced 
Last fall, I was in a Starbucks in Shenzhen talking with a Chinese-Canadian man. Both he and his wife were born in the PRC, but they spent their school years in Vancouver and Washington State. They first moved to Shenzhen seven or eight years ago. He said that when Starbucks first came to China, both he and his wife were absolutely thrilled. It was like Christmas for them when they began to open stores in Shenzhen.
“There’s something about seeing a Starbucks that just makes you feel safe,” he told me.
I really couldn’t help but laugh, because there are days when I, too, feel that is true. More days than I should admit.