What do you do if you truly have made a concerted effort to not go to Starbucks or buy your coffee from the grocery store only to come face to face with bad quality coffee from your locally owned coffee houses?

Well, this is the problem faced by the author over at Coffee, Tea or Blog?.

There are a lot of people out there who are apt to think Starbucks quality of a high quality. Is this their fault? Or is it really just the best thing they can get around where they live.

The writer of the blog decided to buy his beans at a local cafe, thinking it would be a great quality. After all, it was fairly pricey. But one whiff of the bag proved it was far from fresh. In Dallas, the closest roaster is more than an hour away. Not an easy drive for a quick cup of coffee.

The fact is, I do know better. But is the average joe just starting to branch out from Folgers going to? I live in Dallas, which is somewhere in the top ten largest metro areas in the country. There are a small handful of roasters around, but none less than about an hour round trip. The average person probably isn’t even going to think about a roaster; they’re going to go to the supermarket, go to a coffee house, and either decide that “good coffee” is a myth, or that it equals Starbucks.

As the solution, the author goes to the local Costco, where they roast beans fresh on a constant basis. Granted, the origin of the beans may be questionable, but at least the coffee is freshly roasted. An improvement even over Starbucks. But still a sad improvement overall. It’s a shame that the local Dallas coffee houses don’t make the effort to import really fresh beans. Or to roast them on their own.

This makes me glad to live in Vancouver where we have such amazing cafes, roasters and dedicated coffee lovers who ensure they sell only the best they can get. Thanks to people at Take 5, Elysian Room, JJ Bean and Trees, I never have to go to Starbucks again.