(this isn't an subjective commentary on coffee blends...)

Why isn't Starbucks Seattle's Best Coffee? You have to be from Seattle to truely appreciate this. There are Starbucks EVERYWHERE. People across the country think they are an organization of the devil (and the second home of Doctor Evil). However, all of that aside, Starbucks can never be Seattle's Best Coffee.

Seattle's Best Coffee is a smaller, but still somewhat national chain of coffee vendors. They are in several airports (Detroit?), and are fairly well known, but they have no where near the presence of the aforementioned giant.

"So what's the point?", you ask.

The point is, my java-craving friend, that you can walk into any Starbucks, (this works the best in Seattle), and ask:

"Are you Seattle's Best Coffee?"

And much to the dismay of all the Starbucks owners across the world, they, by law, have to say:

"No."

And thus, by a small matter of trademark, and having nothing to do with any brewed liquid, Starbucks will never be Seattle's best coffee.
The truly funny part about this is that Starbucks acquired SBC well over a year ago.

In Denver there are several businesses that license one logo or the other. The fake competition is pretty amusing. It makes the joke above even funnier in a sideways sense.

It is also rumored (with emphasis on rumor) that Seattle's Best is the dumping ground for all of the contracted crop buys that don't meet standards. Starbucks routinely makes five year commitments to coffee growers. Allegedly the beans that don't make the cut end up as Seattle's Best. Whether or not this is true... hey, I'm just a very small cog in the giant, grinding death machine. Maybe it's just another injoke.

BTW, if you ask me the above question while I'm at work I will roll my eyes at you. "Besides not being Seattle's Best Coffee we also do not have Prince Albert in a can." Thanks.

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