Where to Drink Coffee?

Coffee is like a daily routine for Italians and when you wander around Italy, you can easily see at least one bar, where Italian drink coffee, on every street. Because the market is too saturated, Starbucks could not take any advantage of the competition. Although Starbucks coffee is modified on the basis of Italian coffee, Italian people consider Starbucks coffee not authentic and too light, so simply from the aspects of coffee, Italian choose their own bars rather than Starbucks.

Looking beyond the obvious, there are more reasons for Italian to refuse Starbucks. Most Italians drink at least two cups of coffee every day, and while the price of Starbucks is several times higher than Italian coffee, two cups of Starbucks every day is a financial burden on some of them, so Italian coffee seems to be a more rational choice. Moreover, coffee has a long history in Italy which now becomes a culture, and Italian usually drink a cup of coffee as breakfast and drink another one in the afternoon. Coffe culture represents the Italian low pace of life, in which people take a few minutes of break to finish their coffee and continue on their work. Italian people will never do other things and focus only on drinking coffee and take a breath while enjoying the coffee. Hence, refusing Starbucks for Italian also demonstrates their rejection of the fast-food culture. However, when you walk inside the Starbucks, you see people sitting there with their laptop or book open everywhere and silently, so you quietly order your choices and sit on an empty table starting to typing the essay that due tomorrow and becoming one of them. Unlike the small size of Italian coffee, Starbucks coffee has a much greater capacity, even the “medium” size, so people either take it away with them or sit down and start working or studying when finishing coffee. Therefore, for most people, the meaning of Starbucks is not a coffee bar but a silent place with free wifi where they can work on their own and spend some time.