[brailsafe]

Their offerings could be reduced to charging quite a lot for dairy or dairy adjacent products, paired with generally the same F tier beans you'd get at any place that was started in the 90s, especially the Italian ones. The espresso machine probably doesn't make much of a difference, but what they use serves their purpose well.

[quickthrower2]

Grinder and machine makes a difference. Starbucks use a fully automatic (grinds, doses, comoresses etc.). I don’t think state of the art there has caught up with the classic machine (when I say classic there are still a lot of computers etc innit!)

[brailsafe]

I think they get what they can out of their beans, the blonde roast actually isn't so bad black, but it's just that their beans aren't generally suited to being drunk without some kind of fatty dairy adjacent product. You grind and prepare commodity cheap beans in the best way possible and you'll pretty much get a similar result.