Starbucks: How Complicated Can Coffee Be?

Rating Starbucks in Ann Arbor

—By Dora Usdan, Adetola Oyelade, Nik Plonski, and Sam Staruch

Like many other towns, Ann Arbor residents don’t have to look far to get their coffee fix—with a Starbucks in almost every neighborhood, reliably bad coffee is never more than a few minutes away. But students on campus are strongly opinionated on which locations they prefer and frequent, especially as the “Let’s Grab a Cup of Coffee” casual plan becomes more ubiquitous with a lifting of Covid restrictions. We’ve taken the time to put together a definitive guide to Ann Arbor’s Starbucks, based on study space, beverage quality, and overall energy. 

Starbucks on South University (1214 South University) – 4/10: Best for eavesdropping with a long wait

It’s dusk on the Sahara: elephants, gazelles, warthogs, and wildebeest flock to the bustling watering hole. Loud noises, abrupt hellos, and competition for access to the water is characteristic of this hotspot of the desert. The Starbucks on South University is no different. Close to the Greek houses on Hill and neighboring large apartment buildings, you’d be hard pressed to find this spot not full of loud conversations, shrill laughter, and incessant gossip—using first and last names to talk about people here is an immediate no, unless you want the whole student body to know as well. Starbucks frequenter Jaime Annear remarks “I can’t step foot inside without seeing everyone I know.” In terms of study space, this Starbucks is good if the only work you’re planning on getting done is writing for a future gossip column in the Michigan Daily or any other student magazine. The line here is never too long, which gives a false hope that your drink will be ready with any sort of haste. Don’t come to this location on the way to your 8 ams, or you won’t find yourself in class until five minutes before it is let out. 

Starbucks on Main (300 S Main St) – 5/10: A distracting adult energy

This location feels like there was a once a great mom & pop coffee shop there for generations that was trashed and replaced with everyone’s favorite coffee corporate overlord, Starbucks. An ideal place for pretentious young professionals and hipsters to pretend to get work done on their laptops, the energy certainly differs from the other locations we visited. Luckily for us, their lack of actual work ethic translates to blazing fast WiFi speeds that will allow you to breeze through that late assignment. Furthermore, the Starbucks on Main isn’t filled to the brim with loud freshman gossiping about which fraternity throws the best. We ordered a tall pumpkin spice latte to get into the fall mood. The latte wasn’t great and certainly wasn’t worth the $5.75, but it did warm us up on the first true fall day this semester. Ultimately, this location is a great place to get some work done and order mediocre, overpriced coffee.

Starbucks on State Street (222 S State St) – 3/10: Popular for no reason 

The Starbucks on State Street is the most popular location for U of M students. It is placed on the strip of all the most popular food chains, features a beautiful view of downtown Ann Arbor, and is within walking distance for most of Umich’s students. While it is packed with all of these beautiful amenities, we found it to be sub par. Due to it being the most popular and centralized location, it is almost always packed with students making the lines unbearable and the study spaces obsolete. If you ever are lucky enough to find a seat at their kitchen table/bar style seating, you will get to experience the unique feeling of your laptop or notebook sticking to the coffee stained surface. But just when you think it couldn’t get worse, you made the horrid mistake of ordering a drink. This location is frequently out of their most popular ingredients, and their frappuccinos taste more like a watered-down milkshake.

Starbucks on Ann Arbor-Saline (3141 Ann Arbor-Saline Rd) – 5/10: More meh than the rest?

This location is great for only two reasons; 1) It’s right next to Meijer, 2) It has a drive through to pick up your overpriced coffee after you spent your entire budget getting family sized Cheez-Its at Meijer. That’s it. However, if you have a car and need to get work done this is the most desolate Starbucks we’ve ever seen. Seriously, nobody is ever there except maybe another student doing homework, and the tumbleweeds that cross our path. Although, this does allow you to get your order back incredibly fast and allows for minimal distractions. The interior design of the store is about as bland and as corporate as it gets. Thus, we think the experience inside the Ann Arbor-Saline location is rather dull. However, it’s hard to ignore the luxury of a drive through and reliability of a silent place to study. Overall, we found this experience rather “meh” compared to the other locations on this list. 

Ross Starbucks (701 Tappan Ave.) – 7/10: Great study atmosphere, awful wait times

This location has the largest revenue per square foot out of any Starbucks in the world. Good luck trying to get a coffee from here before class time however, the line is always super long in the morning hours. This Starbucks also doesn’t have the usual profusion of drink options compared to other locations on campus. If you do manage to brute out the long wait time, there is a large common area for you to enjoy your overpriced latte and study with your buddies. Study atmosphere definitely saves this Starbucks from being in a lower-to-bottom tier of Starbucks as the Ross building is just top of the line when it comes to that. So I would highly recommend this Starbucks to anyone who is not in a time crunch and wants a fantastic study experience.

Based on our intensive research demonstrated above, we’ve concluded that the Starbucks in Ross is the best in the area, perfect for striking the sweet balance of below average coffee, chatting with friends, and pretending to get homework done. That being said, we recommend checking out some local to Ann Arbor coffee spots, like M36, The Great Commoner, and Vertex for more space to study and better quality drinks.

Photo by Usama Akram via Unsplash