Starbucks Adds Alcohol: Chain Is One Bad Hot Dog Away From Becoming 7-Eleven

Jonny Boy

Be very afraid, girls: Starbucks no longer a safe haven from drunk-tards hitting on you.

As if the hipster / unpublished author / part-time screenwriter milieu of Starbucks wasn't enough of a reason to get your ass to the nearest indie java dealer ASAP, the coffee giant announced today that it's adding alcohol to the menu of as many as six Southern California locations.

Our local Starbucks could already use a bouncer to defend caffeine addicts against the crack addicts (not to mention the aggressively bad, ready made sandwiches), so anything 40 proof would just be the whipped cream on top.

Genius:

As our sister blog Squid Ink notes, the addition of hooch to the fine offerings could help you "make your own Four Loko" -- that since-remixed and oft-banned concoction of alcohol and caffeine.

Classy.

Clarice Turner, senior veep of U.S. ops at Starbucks says the move will ...

... evolve and enhance the Starbucks Experience based on what our customers are telling us.

Burp. That's what they're telling you.

We're amazed at Starbiggy's evolution from a near-high-end franchise (remember the breathless reaction to $2 coffee and $5 latte?) to a 7-Eleven you can live in, complete with panhandlers, so-so coffee, bad food and, now, booze.

Starbucks' Turner promises:

At select stores where it is relevant for the neighborhood, we are focused on creating an atmosphere where our customers can relax with a friend, a small bite to eat and a cup of coffee or glass of wine.

Mmm. Yes. Savor the terroir of Guy-Who-Lives-With-Mom-And-Comments-On-All-News-Stories, who's sitting next you, salivating over the nearby Asian American college girls and, now, has ample opportunity to get drunk as well.

Perhaps the saving grace of Starbucks at night was that hot young women and the unemployed men who love them could find a place safe from outright nightclub perversion.

No more, apparently.

If you read Kelefa Sanneh's awesome piece in the New Yorker late last year about the new appreciation for a "farmer-obsessed coffee movement" that eschew's Starbucks' over-roasted, mass-market fare, you know how far the chain has fallen down the java totem poll.

What's interesting here is that the 'Bucks seems to be doing so willingly, embracing the drink-in-the-liquor-store-parking-lot ethos: This is brown-paper-bagging-it with wi-fi!

Just don't spill any on your laptop.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]