{"id":1284,"date":"2012-07-19T09:34:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T01:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2012-07-19T09:34:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T01:34:11","slug":"starbucks-via-so-20th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2012\/07\/starbucks-via-so-20th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks Via: So 20th century!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I will admit it.\u00a0 I’m an instant coffee drinker.\u00a0 I know I’m not the only one in America, but I’m one of the few who will admit<\/em> to it.\u00a0 I drink instant coffee because it’s easy to make, but also because I like my coffee fairly mild.\u00a0 I do have a strong preference for Taster’s Choice and Nescaf\u00e9 – so I do have some standards of sorts, but clearly they are not very high.<\/p>\n

I first heard of Starbucks VIA last May when I won a raffle for a Starbucks gift card and the card came with a 3 individual samples of French Roast instant coffee.\u00a0 I tried them and they were great.\u00a0 The coffee has a rich flavor, stronger and more developed than any instant coffee I drink, but without the bitterness of the real thing.\u00a0 As far as instant coffees go, it’s by far my favorite.<\/p>\n

But… it’s expensive.\u00a0 Ridiculously expensive, about 83-cents per cup, though if you buy it bulk you can get it down to 60-cents a cup.\u00a0\u00a0 A cup of Taster’s Choice costs less than 10-cents by comparison.\u00a0 So needless to say, I haven’t been buying it.<\/p>\n

Soon after I received my sample pack, I saw VIA at Safeway, and not too long after that, at Grocery Outlet.\u00a0 But even at Grocery Outlet it was too expensive, though I don’t remember exactly what the price was.\u00a0 Today I noticed that the 3-cup packages are down to 99-cents (though they expired in June).\u00a0 33-cents a cup is not too bad, so I bought a few packages to have it as the occasional treat.\u00a0 Lately, I’m drinking tea anyway.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem with VIA, besides the price, is all the needless packaging.\u00a0 I guess they need it to make you think you are getting more from your money than you really are.\u00a0 It’s unlikely that anyone seeing a $40 7-oz jar of VIA placed next to a $10 jar of Taster Choice would reach towards the former.\u00a0 But all of this means a lot of wasted materials which come at a significant environmental cost.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that Starbucks did a lot of market research before introducing this product, but I just don’t see who it would appeal to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will admit it.\u00a0 I’m an instant coffee drinker.\u00a0 I know I’m not the only one in America, but I’m one of the few who will admit to it.\u00a0 I drink instant coffee because it’s easy to make, but also because I like my coffee fairly mild.\u00a0 I do have a strong preference for Taster’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,53],"tags":[218,251],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-items","category-grocery-outlet","tag-coffee","tag-starbucks","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}