Worst coffee award goes to: Dunkin' Donuts

that said, their iced blueberry coffee is a real treat!

such crappy coffee, why does everyone love it?

not much flavor, tho.

Weird, this is the almost the same way I drink my coffee.

The coffee I don't like is Starbucks, if you try drinking it black or near black it has this ashy, burnt quality. I think they depend on people pouring tons of sugar, cream etc. to make their coffee palatable.

i second this emotion.

"The coffee I don't like is Starbucks"

and this one. burnt overroasted beans gross me out.

My response? "No. Its a French name for it. Misto is the Starbucks name for it. You're trying to brand cafe au lait? Seriously?"

He acted very offended. Whatever. I worked at a real coffee place, and I speak French (or at least used to). Its a fucking cafe au lait.

Whatever. I still call bullshit. Fuck the 'Buck.

DD is also not even that cheap -- usually $1 for a small, which is considerably smaller than a Starbucks small.

As for Starbucks, I really really can taste the difference between their blends to the point that I'll only order if they're brewing House or one of a couple others. Those are the only ones that don't have that nasty tang.

One thing I will say for DD, their latte drinks are very good.

i was in toscana for 3 weeks and people still called it cafe au lait, so i think you should stay strong with your au lait loyalties.

xpost

Offended? I would've kicked you out for being a god damn retard.

I don't think that "tang" is much of a mystery.

"Can I have a Large Cafe Au Lait?"

"You mean a Venti Misto?"

"When the fuck did we get to Italy? See that BIIIIIG cup over there? Fill it up half way with coffee and then fill the other half up with steamed milk. Whatever you want to call it, go ahead."

xpost

A cafe au lait is a cafe au lait. If I walked into the local coffe shop and ordered a misto, they'd look at me with a quizzical expression and say "Excuse me? What's in it, and we'll try to make it for you." The same results would not happen with use of the term "cafe au lait."

Don't over-brand shit by coopting a relatively obscure term for something that is called the same thing everywhere else in America.

Its like a person who has visited a foreign country and suddenly starts calling things "flats" or "pubs" instead of "apartments" or "bars."

LAMEASHELL

I will believe you that he was being a cunt, but you could be wrong, too.

(xpost: I don't know your life but there's a pretty big gulf between an "apartment" and a "bar". Hee.)

A cafe au lait. Thanks. Here's your money.

In some places this drink would be called "cafe con leche" I think.

xpost Dan you are standing in a very trecherous position calling out other people for ineffectual rants! I mean I might as well start calling out the Starbucks dude for being an overcorrective, smug douche immediately after posting corrections to Spanish spellings on the St. Patrick's thread!!!!!!!!!

For shame, sir; FOR SHAME.

(xpost: Ally, the complete and utter tenuousness of my rhetorical stance is what is making this fun! It's like the salt thread of March.)

Anyway I lived out west also and have never heard of this abomination but I never really frequented Starbucks til I moved back east and lived pretty much next door or above multiple Starbucks. Still it doesn't make sense, "West Coast" cafe au lait and "East Cost" cafe au lait. It's like Hellman's v Best Foods, wtf they're the same goddamn thing.

Cafe Au Lait, bitches. REPRESENT!!!! (throws oddly contorted hand gesture at computer screen)

xpost Scott oh my god.

A quick Google on "starbucks misto" turns up a lot of references which indicates that it is indeed the preferred Starbucks terminology - and some people who dispute that it is really the same drink as a cafe au lait.

-- Dan ("Come, Muffy; These Cads Don't DESERVE Our Custom!") Perry ([email protected]), March 14th, 2006.

That wasn't me!!!

-- o. nate (syne_wav...), March 14th, 2006.

A local coffeeshop owner told me that Cafe Con Leche is made with condensed milk, but that might just be the way she makes it. Dunno. But Jersey City does have a ton of places that serve it due to the sizeable Cuban population, so she may know what she's talking about. In any case, good espresso + steamed condensed milk = fucking amazing.

AND Republican!

Gogo globalization.

Luckily, I have other options than the 'Buck.

As an owner of a gargantuan corporation, I would like to know what benefits this coffee may have for my collective organisational unit.

I don't think so - where is it? I've been to a lot of DD in Rhode Island but mostly college hill, fox point, downcity in Providence & then out in East Providence.

Dunkin Donuts coffee is amazingly good if you just buy a bag of the coffee beans, grind them yourself and make it fresh w/no cream or sugar.

Right now I'm drinking a cup from the work coffeemaker and it's horrendous.. milk & sugar wouldn't help, they'd just make the coffee breath phenomenon worse.

FYI if anyone DOES want a cup of that burnt Starbucks blend, they're giving out free cups until noon today. I don't know why, exactly.

and that context is that DD coffee isn't so bad, unless you are a coffee snob.

they showed it on the phantom gourmet show in Boston. it's all warm muted browns and reds, made to look like a cross between panera and starbucks i think. they sell paninis and big soft cookies and all sorts of amazing looking test crap

as well as looking like they're brewing good coffee for once.

Allzay, if I knew it was this easy to yank your chain, I'd be tempted to do it a lot more often. Keep that in mind when you start a thread called "Worst pizza award goes to: Pizza Hut" or "Worst sex award goes to: losing my virginity"

Easily.

Krispy Kreme fucking rules. I cant believe it took that long to bring it up. Somehow their coffee tastes like a donut...but without their donuts I wouldnt give a damn about the coffee.

-- don weiner (dandydonweine...), March 15th, 2006.

Nonsense. Coffee is something I drink every day, thus making its taste much more crucial to me than that of wine, which I have maybe once or twice a month.

I didn't know cafe au lait was not common in the U.S.; maybe that's why I sometimes don't see it on menus. I always order it, or cappucino. What is the difference between cafe au lait and cafe latte? I ordered one in Las Vegas, Neveda, and my server had a snit and acted like he'd never heard of it before, and I said, I thought it was on the menu, and then he said, oh, the other one.

Maybe this is why I love iced coffee so much--because it gets so watered down with the milk and the ice cubes.

No sugar, by the way.

P.S. Would it kill Panera to offer some kind of coffee besides regular coffee, fill it up yerself? Since they purport to be a bread and bakery, shouldn't they start with the some Starbucks-esque action there?

The Wall Street Journal earlier this year sent samples of coffee from Starbucks, 7-Eleven, and Dunkin' Donuts to Central Analytical Laboratories. The lab reported that a 16-ounce Starbucks house blend coffee contained 223 milligrams of caffeine, compared with 174 and 141 milligrams in comparable amounts of Dunkin' Donuts and 7-Eleven coffee, respectively.

from http://www.slate.com/id/2107807/

No, what Weiner means is that being a wine snob takes TEN times the EFFORT of being a coffee snob. Weiner, regardless of his CASH position or his REAL occupation, hasn't ever WANTED to be a wine snob and isn't. TOMBOT is ALSO apparently TOO lazy to ask Weiner what he MEANT so TOMBOT makes up shit to MAKE himself feel SUPERIOR.

Nothing goes better with a nice after dinner espresso than a lecture on laziness. I'm sure that's a hit at parties.

I'm still trying to remember if I've ever made that comment about coffee snobs and wine snobs at a party. Probably.

I was all about to get pissed off because of some arcane reference you stubbornly refused to explain, and then, I looked at the picture. hahaha. excellent.

this story makes me happy. although the non-styrofoam cup might have been a bit much.

Michelle Malkin urges you to gorge on their donuts...AND DIE!

I can understand the fear of document fraud here, certainly, but given our experience with the airline watchlists, I'm not convinced a central database is going to be that much more of an improvement.

Funny justification in there: "We decided to put up signs because everyone just assumes all immigrants are illegal anyway."

SHEIK FRED THE BAKER

Hour 15 of the gigantor bi-annual family reunion, when the boiled generic coffee in the sun-bleached 1970's urn tastes like acid. This culinary atrocity puts out an aroma complementary to the smell of old people and orange drink.

I *said* it was Malkin in the link! Fair warning!

STarbucks coffee is great, dunkin donuts is limp but OK.
We've had this discussion before. I discovered a new good one - Cafe Goya espresso! suprisingly good and cheap!

WHY IS IT BAD TO HAVE ILLEGALE IMMIGRANT workers? they pay taxes and then they dont get anything in return so how do the legal people lose out?

are there naked imiigrants! OH GOD! they are columnists! they got civered in arabian coffee???

THEY TOOK MY MINIMUM WAGE JOB!!!!

Dissolve to dream sequence. Cue Harp.

DISEMBODIED VOICE: "NO, HE'S NOT ONE OF OURS."

FB: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I never knew until now that DD was owned by Carlyle Group and Bain Capital. No wonder their coffee is shitty - it's a product of the New World Order

Has anyone else seen the Dunkin' Donuts coffee beans for sale in the grocery at ridiculously deluxe prices? I am scared of it, mainly because I have never seen or been in a Dunkin' Donuts. It is like if my grocery suddenly started selling "Piggly Wiggly's Crawdad and Okra Butterscotch Krimpet Moon Pie brand Espresso Beans."

why anyone would want to brew shitty DD coffee at home is way, way beyond my comprehension

It is like $9.50 a bag, too! Whereas the Tully's is always on sale for $6!

DD coffee is not bad for what it is. Though that does seem rather over-priced. (See also, Taco Bell brand salsa.)

$2.50 = coffee
$7.00 = space-age pouch enclosure they've put it in

I like Dunkin Donuts coffee; it has a kind of buttery roundness/thickness to it that I prefer to more acidic coffee. It's like there's an invisible bit of cream in there before you even get started.

I bringin Cafe Caribe at work but tha like DD!
I say dat not gut!

wtf is Abbott on about?

i went to that Grumpy Cafe with that $11,000 Colver machine yeterday. yes, i'm a gullible yuppie who just does whatever the nyt tells him to do. but i didnt have to out of my way and it was pretty good. even all the chocolate, plum notes which are usually bs came true. i think my cup was $3, they also had a $6 cup of some other variant.

i heart grumpy.

okay, dunkin' donuts coffee hatred is really kinda retarded and outright snobby. it is middle of the road, sure, but i think you would be hard-pressed to find another chain that is so proliferate and consistently decent.

"chocolate, plum" notes

Haha the thing that confuses me about Abbott's analogy up there is that there are plenty of Dunkin Donuts throughout the southwest! I even grew up across the street from a Korean Dunkin Donuts franchise owner. We went there most Saturday mornings, for a while. Also when I was little the nearby kids had a "Martial Arts Club," and he taught us stuff he learned during his Korean military service.

God bless you, Mr. Lee, and here's hoping our early-80s little-kid notions of Martial Arts were not super-offensive or anything

fwiw i think starbucks coffee is even worse than dd, but i really don't think avoiding DD is snobby at all if you can find a better cuppa joe at a comparable price (p.s. this is not a difficult task)

Elmo takes a bold "if you can buy something better for the same price, you should" stance

(haha no snark, elmo, you are awesome and stuff)

just countering the "if you don't like franchise coffee, u a snob" stance

haha

(what i meant to type is: preferring something else to dunkin' donuts is fine, but it really doesn't seem worth expending effort to hate what is perfectly adequate, if unexceptional, coffee)

just countering the "if you don't like franchise coffee, u a snob" stance

nobody said this

It is better than starbucks, esp if you like your coffee black -- starbucks tastes like liquid charcoal.

i used to be ok with DD but ever since DD changed corporate ownership and started offering shit like stuffed panini and breakfast pizza, and not serving actual flavored coffee but using flavored syrup shots instead (not a personal issue for me, more of principle) i kinda avoid the place.

also, marshmallow flavored coffee? blueberry? wtf gross

oh man, i have not seen any of these disgusting marshmallow/blueberry coffee combos

even TMBG will not sway my (overcaffinated, palpitating) heart

remy i think they are mostly used in the preparation of coolatta's or whatever they call their milkshakes

That is vile. But I don't even like sugar or sweetener in my coffee, so I was never going to like something like marshmellow flavored coffee.

boo at DD

i will have to target my franchise nostalgia on del's, i guess

No you can def get blueberry coffee.

Also DD > Tim Horton's or whatever they call it. Fuck Canada, your chain is TEH GAY

Tim Horton's bought Bess Eaton a few years ago, I believe

http://gordonscornerdunkin.com/

crazy flavor options at bottom of page there

http://gordonscornerdunkin.com/img/caption_chocolate.gif

"your melt hearts with a single glance"

"mystical flavors"

try the myrrh and aqua vitae cappuccino

Grumpy espresso is the tits but I have not tried this Clover thing yet.

DD coffee might be good if it were actually brewed stronger? I do find it weird that people would pay a premium for it in stores but I guess it's that whole "brand" thing I've been reading about.

Those bottled starbucks frappucinos taste like cold quik, after all.

Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint's definitely my favorite coffee spot in NYC ... free wifi, they let you plug your laptops in, and the space is big enough that you can actually sit in there for more than 20 minutes without feeling like you have to leave.

teh new owners:

The Carlyle Group

Notable current and former employees and affiliated persons

Business

* G. Allen Andreas - Chairman of the Archer Daniels Midland Company
* Daniel Akerson - company director
* Joaquin Avila - investment banker
* Laurent Beaudoin - CEO of Bombardier (1979-)
* Paul Desmarais - Chairman of the Power Corporation of Canada
* Arthur Levitt - former Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
* Karl Otto Pöhl - former President of the Bundesbank

Politics and public service

* James Baker III, former United States Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush, Staff member under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Carlyle Senior Counselor, served in this capacity from 1993 to 2005.
* George H. W. Bush, former U.S. President, Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board from April 1998 to October 2003.
* George W. Bush, current U.S. President. Was appointed in 1990 to the Board of Directors of one of Carlyle's first acquisitions, an airline food business called Caterair, which Carlyle eventually sold at a loss. Bush left the board in 1992 to run for Governor of Texas.
* Frank C. Carlucci, former United States Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989; Also, former Princeton wrestling partner of former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Carlyle Chairman and Chairman Emeritus from 1989 to 2005.
* Richard Darman, former Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under George H. W. Bush, Senior Advisor and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group from 1993 to the present
* Allan Gotlieb, Canadian ambassador to the United States (1981-89) and member of Carlyle's Canadian advisory board.
* Liu Hong-Ru, former chairman of China's Securities Regulatory Commission
* William Kennard, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Bill Clinton, Carlyle's Managing Director in the Telecommunications & Media Group from 2001 to the present.
* Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under President Bill Clinton, Carlyle Senior Advisor from 2001 to the present
* Peter Lougheed - Premier of Alberta (1971-85)
* John Major, former British Prime Minister, Chairman, Carlyle Europe from 2002 until 2005
* Frank McKenna, Canadian ambassador to the United States and former member of Carlyle's Canadian advisory board
* Mack McLarty, White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, President of Kissinger McLarty Associates, Carlyle Senior Advisor from 2003 to the present
* Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand (twice), former member of the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board until the board was disbanded in 2004
* Fidel V. Ramos, former president of the Philippines, Carlyle Asia Advisor Board Member until the board was disbanded in 2004
* Dan Senor - political consultant
* Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed Prime Minister of Thailand, former member of board, who resigned on taking office in 2001
* Luis Téllez Kuenzler, Mexican economist, current Secretary of Communications and Transportation under the Calderon administration and former Secretary of Energy under the Zedillo administration.

Other

* Norman Pearlstine - editor-in-chief of Time (1995-2005)

Bain Capital LLC is a Boston, Massachusetts-based private equity firm founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III and Eric Kriss; all partners in the consulting firm Bain & Company. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. Bain Capital was originally conceived as a combined equity start-up and leveraged buyout fund, an innovative strategy at the time.

I don't know anyone can expect quality from a franchise that sells CASKS of COFFEE. Come on!

Even America's test kitchen thinks dunkin's coffee sucks.
Starbucks was rated highest. Sadly, I agree. I hate agreeing with the masses on anything!

I have to imagine that the rest of the US just has NEVER had good coffee and so benignly things that dunkin's is the bomb. Pfft. sad!

I also read that Dunkin's uses Arabica beans, and that for every 1/4 pound of Arabica beans, there is at least 10% bad and/or rotten beans. That makes it all the more unstable.

Yeech! Yes, I may not drink the stuff every day, but when I do... I want it the best of the best. Call me a coffee snob, I just don't care!

um, pretty much every coffee roaster of any quality uses arabica beans

and I'd also imagine the rotten beans can be picked out?

Even America's test kitchen thinks dunkin's coffee sucks.
Starbucks was rated highest. Sadly, I agree. I hate agreeing with the masses on anything!

i shoulda stopped reading here

Call me a coffee snob, I just don't care!

Don't worry, I won't!

dunkin doesn't use 100% arabica for flavored coffee iirc

ren vs stimpy

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Montreal-style_bagel&curid=1093595&diff=222944304&oldid=219350699

waht:

Looking to entice those hungry for a healthier option, Dunkin' Donuts will begin offering a new slate of better-for-you offerings in August.

The menu, which will debut in stores Aug. 6, will feature two new flatbread sandwiches made with egg whites. Customers will be able to choose either a turkey sausage egg-white sandwich or a vegetable one. Both will be under 300 calories with 9 grams of fat or less, the company said.

do you even have dunkin donuts in southern california?

I spent three years in upstate New York in the eighties. I know very well what Dunkin Donuts is.

I had one of the earlier flatbreads on a road trip -- not bad

i wasn't asking if you knew what it was. i was genuinely curious as to whether they had infiltrated the southern california market yet.

a couple of the winchell's over here have turned into 'kin 'nuts

dunno where you are uh oh but i know they've entered the mid-south. i don't know how far west they go or how far south.

we don't have any good donut chains in california, that i'm aware of

tim hudson's?

wait, he's a baseball player. tim horton's was the donut chain.

LA

they're in texas, i remember being surprised at that too. fucking a i need to find some tobacco. later gators.

I remember Dunkin' Donuts in Los Angeles as a kid, but it looked like it either tried and failed immediately, or it was once doing alright and was dying by the time I was old enough to notice.

This was in the late 70s, btw.

I kinda equate Dunkin' Donuts with Pioneer Chicken for the same reason.

If you have a Dunkin' Donuts near you, is it a location that still makes donuts in-store or do they truck them in from some other location? Because all the ones around here do the latter now. I just had one that was probably 4 days old, but I'm not driving back to store to demand my 89¢ refund.

Krispy Kreme's always been better, anyway.

There used to be DDs in Uk.

Count your blessings.

I guess the donuts are still good when you get them fresh, but Dunkin' Donuts clearly doesn't consider that their main menu item anymore. Should just shorten the name to Dunkin' and get it over with.

The only reason I go there now is to get the 1lb bags of coffee beans for my dad, anyway. But I thought I'd pick up a couple donuts tonight and they were hard, flavorless and a waste of money.

Krispy Kreme is touting their new coffees -- anyone tried them? I like their donuts enough that I might at least consider stopping by one if the coffee is good, although I think the only remaining NYC location is Penn Station?

I had to buy a box of coffee for a party and thought to myself, "I could spend a little more and get Starbucks...eh, but America Runs on Dunkin." That is the most fucking brilliant slogan ever.

tim hortons is the worst shit iirc

Starbucks is shittier than Dunkin dollar for dollar anyway. Dunkin's espresso drinks are ok and cheap and their coffee is innocuous at worst.

i eschew starbucks for tim horton's because they're both bad but tim's is not twice as bad, and is less than half the price

there's a certain genre of coffee drinker that seeks out dunkins (ok in isolation) and claim that they only drink "good" coffee (also ok in isolation), but those two things should never go together

jim in vancouver, what if i told you that i could provide you coffee that is 2% as good as starbucks, at only 1% of the price? because i know this guy down the alley who does funny things with old grounds and i get wholesale prices

only problem is the constant diarrhea, 94/7

im in

i should note that my preference is bougie third wave coffee places that do pour over but i don't have the time for that on my 15 minute morning break

same. it's probably bad for my "career" prospects or whatever, but i prioritize making coffee at home (nothing fancy, just a press pot) even if it makes me late to work

McDonald’s has the best of the cheap coffee options imo

was my grandmother's favourite coffee outlet

agree on McD's, I rep for their coffee

If I am out and get coffee (which I rarely do) I would pick DD over anything else. I only order ice coffee black in all kinds of weather so it's the best option for the price.

what kind of country do we live in if people prefer to grab coffee at a big chain rather than the cheap, local coffee shop, which is so widespread in most major cities

america runs on dunkin

it doesn't, though

but...america runs on dunkin

*looks around for corporate support*

im not in your country but I'm in a reasonably large city, downtown, and there is no cheap coffee anywhere near where i am other than at chain places

tim hortons is the worst shit iirc

aiui a Brazilian holding company that owns Burger King bought Tim Hortons and switched coffee supplier to a shittier one

so the old supplier convinced McDonalds to switch to them

There is no cheap local coffee shop in most cities. Definitely not NYC. All the small interesting ones eventually got completely branded/chained out. I could get an anthora coffee but I really like my coffee cold.

I remember a caller on the Answer Me This podcast asking where they could get Dunkin Donuts coffee in the UK as they had developed a taste for it when on holiday in Florida, the hosts response was basically "have you tried any other non-instant coffee before? We think maybe you haven't."

also the franchised dunkins here usually have south asian owners/workers and I would rather tip them.

i can assure you there are, just not in financial districts, rich neighborhoods or around highly touristy areas

I live in Queens and most of the coffee ships around me became brooklynified already (considering I moved here from wburg). Even in south american where I live part time, a lot of places are getting complicated with their coffee.

just not in financial districts, rich neighborhoods or around highly touristy areas

you just described 92% of manhattan.

sure whats cheap

well, that's sad

i've lived in a major american city my whole life and i have usually found $1 coffee from a donut shop or deli, which are sometimes run by immigrant families

obviously, most cities do not operate like manhattan

Yeah, I don't like hot coffee so that's my thing re: the anthora/deli types of coffee. I also typically don't buy coffee out anyway unless I want to go for a walk during work or am traveling. Any dedicated coffee shop, and ice coffee black can be $4-$6 for a relatively small size.

I kind of feel like prices are similar in all coastal US cities, Philly, London etc.

it depends on the type of coffee you're talking about and the type of establishment that's serving it

there are cheaper options than dunkin' donuts, though, which is what you initially said you opted for

for ice coffee dunkin is cheap and prevalent and fast. I remember once being in montreal and making a plan to go to this supposedly amazing coffee shop a little out of our way. We finally made it there and realized they used the same coffee brand that had a shop in our neighborhood back home.

I probably have the american problem of wanting a big gulp size of coffee too.

Ordered the “Dunkin midnight” and it’s the strongest coffee I’ve had in years

1/3 of the cup is milk and it’s still a dark brown color overall

Jealous. Was excited they opened one here but they don't use the same coffee.