Observation Station

Coffee Culture

• Episode 43

Share episode

Send us a text

You're about to experience a voyage into the hilarious world of coffee culture! We're setting out on a caffeinated exploration into the intriguing disparity between those sipping on luxury, artisanally roasted, single origin coffees and their counterparts who are all about that budget brew. Prepare to laugh as we break down the peculiarities and passions of these two very different coffee tribes. From the painstaking precision of latte art, to the staggering financial costs of coffee-drinking habits, and even the convenience of coffee apps, we've got it all covered!

But, oh, we're not stopping there. We're also diving headfirst into the comical side of our thought process. Ever wondered how your thoughts shape your everyday decisions? Well, we're here to spill the beans! Throw in some chatter about the importance of 'me' time and how to turn everyday situations into maximum joy, and we've got one heck of an entertaining and thought-provoking episode. So, get ready to guffaw, ponder, and maybe even see your coffee and your world in a whole new light. Don't forget to spread the word, rate us, and review us - let's share the laughter, one cup at a time!

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Do you ever lift your head up from your phone, look around and think to yourself my God, everything is weird. Well, we do a lot. This is the Observation Station, a unique, entertaining and hilarious podcast. If we observe it, we talk about it. Anything and everything, anything and everything. Let's get weird and let's have some fun. This is the Observation Station and now your host, tommy Heights.

Speaker 2:

Well, welcome, welcome back. How you guys doing here. We got another great episode about coffee culture, so let's get into it here. Fellas, I know that a lot of people here are Starbucks drinkers. In the morning they like their chai, some people just like the dark coffee at 7-eleven. No one cares really what they're drinking in the morning as long as it gets them going, but some people actually have it where one is better than the other and there's no argument. So let's get into this episode. So a couple of things.

Speaker 2:

Here is, we're going to be diving into the world of coffee, not just any coffee, but the fascinating divide between luxury and budget coffee drinkers. So let's explore the differences, shall we? So first off, luxury coffee drinkers. I mean, these folks are the haughty couture of the coffee world. They wouldn't be caught dead with a cup of coffee that doesn't have at least three adjectives in its name. You know the type of a single origin shade, grown, handpicked, ethically sourced, artisanally roasted, french pressed, ethiopian blend. So you know that shit that they hold up the whole line. You know, no one even knows what's going on here, you know. I mean, they can tell you the life story of the coffee being from the moment it sprouted in the soil to the second it was ground into their cup and their coffee machine.

Speaker 2:

These people they don't a lot of them. When I asked them I said because I did a lot of advising with finance and some people are spending like $300 a month at Starbucks or any other or whatever it is coffee places. When they're spending five bucks on the coffee, three, four bucks on a pastry, then they tip the worker. Sometimes they even go twice a day I don't even know how that's possible when they're like you know what, I'm just going to go back and just get some cake pops and what not and spend another $8 where they've already spent 16, 20 bucks at Starbucks and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, what is it here that you're doing that? Look, you're coming to Starbucks for convenience. A lot of these people say I don't have that fancy coffee machine at home. Well, I mean you can kind of buy it on Amazon for one month's worth of what you spend. Then just buy whatever it is that they make with their the beans and whatnot, and just make it at home and put some of the flavoring Everything's on the internet actually, how they make those things. So I mean the machine that they have there at Starbucks is more complicated than the control panel of a space shuttle by the looks of it.

Speaker 2:

But don't get me started on the latte art. If they're a morning cup doesn't feature a perfectly rendered a swan or a detailed map of the Milky Way. Their days ruined. So that's your luxury coffee drinkers. Here On the other side of the spectrum, we got our budget coffee drinkers.

Speaker 2:

Now these are ready to wear folks of the coffee world. You know they're not about the frills and the fuss. They want the coffee strong, hot and capable of walking or waking the dead. So they're not even concerned with where the coffee came from, as long as it ends up in their cup. You know their coffee might be pre-ground, vacuum sealed, best before next millennium. Just add boiling water, the folger stuff and you know what they love it. So, and their coffee machine? It's got one button and it's called on. And for the latte art and a few bubbles on the top of their brew maybe is artistic as it gets.

Speaker 2:

I mean, look, they want to have it where people start making fun of people since they go to the gas station to get their coffee. You know how I get my coffee for free at the office. A lot of times people just add a bunch of sugar and the cream and stuff. It's good coffee at that point when you just kind of dope it up the way you want it to be. At the point where people are having spent $300 a month times 12, I mean it's amazing how people go oh, I don't have any money at the end of the month. Well, look what the hell you're spending on here. I mean it's amazing. I mean you should have stock in the corporation, the way that you're coming around here swiping the credit card and looking now here they say that the points expire. I was getting a notification.

Speaker 2:

I don't really go as much anymore to Starbucks because, in my honesty, the whole place has kind of gone downhill in taste. Sometimes I actually go there if I'm in a pinch, if I'm at the mall sometimes they may not even have a coffee place that I know about and a lot of times for Starbucks I'll have my card preloaded with money on there. That way it's just easy to you know, when you go there you just tap it on the code thing or whatever it is, to just tap to pay. Very simple that way I'm not having any fuss, or you just order ahead on your app and just walk up to the thing and then your drinks are already ready. It's kind of a convenient thing, but a lot of times I don't like using Starbucks because I think it's overpriced. Though when I get my free drink on my birthday, I remind myself exactly why don't go to Starbucks for the price.

Speaker 2:

Now, the taste it's pretty good when you actually add a bunch of different shots of this, that and the other. I mean it's your free coffee drink. You could even make that thing like 12, 13 bucks for a macchiato. I add in like four shots of coconut milk or whatever it is in there, three shots of espresso. It's your birthday drink. I've actually never pushed the limit of how much you could get for the birthday drink at Starbucks, but anyways though, I mean some facts on just having it as Americans and not necessarily the whole world as a whole, because I'm just speaking out our country. So, according to the study of National Coffee Association, 62% of Americans drink coffee every single day, and the same study found that the average coffee drinker consumes just over three cups a day. I doubt it. Nowadays people are just drinking this stuff like it's water Especially.

Speaker 2:

I like to have it where, after a nice meal and espresso with some brown sugar. That is the best way to end a meal. It's a great cap to a nice Italian. Give you your pasta, some of the burrata and maybe a little crème brûlée, just to have a little crème brûlée, just to kind of get the palate with that sweet taste to it, because you don't want to go straight from pasta and to an espresso. It just doesn't mend. Well, you can start off with maybe a little burrata, some mozzarella, and have it where you bruschetta. I think that's. I'm trying. I don't think it's bruschetta, it's bruschetta. Now I might be wrong, but you know it's like it's a clock. It's right two times out of the day. So 50-50 shot here, but depending on who you talk to. So but with a cappuccino.

Speaker 2:

I learned that with a cappuccino, even though I love cappuccinos and at the end of the day I can drink whenever I want. At the end. You know this is a free country. Technically. If you want to be Italian in the United States you can't drink a cappuccino past 12. I understand. Look, it's like people that say you can't wear white after Labor Day or something like that. I don't know. You drink what you want to drink. I like to have a cappuccino because there's a little bit more coffee to drink instead of a little espresso. It's just kind of an American thing. It's like you want to have more. Bigger is better kind of thing. It's just me personally.

Speaker 2:

And the big thing nowadays here, especially when you're going to have the like Frappuccinos and the iced coffee a lot of time, I like to say low ice, because all these people do is they just jam a whole bunch of ice in there and you're losing a lot of space for the drink. So if you order it on your app, you could even say low ice and all this stuff If you really want to get really nitpicky, that way you get more of a drink at the Starbucks or any of the other apps that you can customize your drinks. Believe it or not, I don't know on Amazon if you can buy the syrups, but I actually walked up to a Starbucks and said are these syrups, can you actually buy the same ones? Or they use the pumps and the. They sell those things and you can walk up and say can I have a vanilla one? A pop, pop, pop, pop pop.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, if you go on to the app, because it's not like these people are barista connoisseurs. I mean, look, it's a guy named Fred in the back there whipping up your macchiato. Don't think this is some artisanal thing at Starbucks. If you're in some cafe in Italy, I can think that most likely will be artisanal. This over here has to be, has to be kind of a consistent experience, if you know what I'm trying to say. So it has to be very easy across the board to be replicated.

Speaker 2:

So if you go on to the Starbucks app itself, I was looking to say say you like a cafe americano, we'll just say whatever, and it's a law of venti or oh yeah, I was at large whoo a venti, or something like that when you go on there, it will show you the recipe breakdown. Because if you want to customize it say, for instance, like I said, you like a cafe americano, not mind you, I don't have the recipe list, I'm butchering it right now, but just go with me on the way that it would be broken down. So it's a like two two shots of vanilla Flavoring, one shot of coconut milk, one shot of Something something, two pumps of Something. Here I I'm just saying a bunch of things, but it literally gives the amount of pumps of everything, because it has to be where all those pumps are kind of inter interchangeable between different coffees, so that way they don't have to have a three trillion different flavors. This isn't some like Walmart of different flavors. It has to be where, like if you're making a cafe americano, okay, well then, if you're made of macchiato, just has one lesser, one more additional ingredient. So from there it would be a lot cheaper at home getting the machine Making your own Coffee, having it where you can pump all those different things into your coffee. You're good to go.

Speaker 2:

I actually did it myself, bought like the vanilla syrup or something like that. It tasted almost exactly like the Starbucks, because they're really just pumping a whole lot of different artificial flavors because a lot of people don't want to have it where they drink the black coffee. Everything is flavor now. So that's what you're really paying for is all the markup. You got to pay for the overhead of the joint, I mean the place. Who knows what the rent is nowadays in these Starbucks? You mean you go over all the different costs of having employees, liabilities, lights.

Speaker 2:

I can understand why this coffee is costing so much, but at what point is someone like is this worth like 20 bucks for a cup of coffee? We've gone through pretty much like years and years worth of inflation since 2020. It's three years, but the amount of inflation should have been something like. I was reading and you can't quote me on this, but they said it was just like about 10 years of inflation in the past few years, you know. So the whole thing is that, despite Anything that's lowering in the economy, I can't see coffee being made, at least at home, ever slowing down. That is an everlasting business. And a couple more just Facts here I have pulled up because I wanted to be a little bit more factual so that I'm not just talking, talking, talking without any Back up to what I'm saying here.

Speaker 2:

So Research suggests that the smell of coffee alone may help you wake up, due to a protein in the brain that is influenced by the aroma of coffee. I get that definitely. If you walk into a cafe in the morning, it has this just nice aroma of the cafe bean just Very nice roasted beans, very good. And, despite the popular belief, dark roast coffees actually have less caffeine than lighter roasts. The longer a coffee is roasted, the more caffeine gets burned off, all right. So let's see here. Oh well, I mean, look, if you're a coffee drinker, do what makes you feel happy and what you like. If you like to have that 79 cents 7-eleven special, that's you. If you want to have the $4.50 Queen of taking your money in the morning, miss star buckaroos, you go through that drive-through and wait for your 20 cars to get what you need in the morning, to get your, how Joe Rogan says, caffeinated and motivated. So all right. Well, that's gonna wrap up this episode right here.

Speaker 2:

The next episode is gonna be the rise of comedy. So stand-up Comedy here in the digital age. So the rise of stand-up comedy in the digital age. As we see it now, things are changing. So I was mentioning past episodes about there's different artificial intelligence, so maybe we'll have joke writers that are computer robots that are funnier than actual humans writing down jokes, who knows? So I'm thinking about trying to do some open mics out there. Get out and get heckled a couple times so I can be online and be that guy that just worked through it. So all right, well, look, you guys, have a wonderful day. Never forget, keep a smile for a while. Nobody's gonna tell you what to do except your own mind. Your brain is Insane. I don't know. I was just trying to rhyme there. So all right, guys, you have a great one and glad to have you back for another episode. Can't wait to have you back for the next one. Take it easy, everybody.

Speaker 1:

You've been listening to the observation station. We find everyday life and everyday situations Hilarious. We hope you've enjoyed the show. We know we had a blast. Make sure to like, rate and review, and be sure to tell a friend about the show. That would help too. See you next time on the observation station.