Starbucks: The daily grind

This isn't a particularly easy thing for me to admit, but then dark confessions so rarely are. I have a certain predilection, shall we say, for Starbucks. Granted, I'm not overly proud of being a regular, sometimes daily, visitor to the coffee house's answer to McDonald's, but I must be a fairly loyal one. My pocket calculator tells me that, rather obscenely, I spend somewhere in the region of £440 a year in branches across London.

The question several of my corporate-hating friends (and, indeed, my girlfriend) ask me is this: why? Why endorse the kind of place that has so mercilessly killed off the cherished greasy spoon? And then they ask me this: isn't their coffee wretched?

Well, I'll readily confirm that my patronage isn't due to its cappuccinos – which are mostly weak and largely tasteless – but simply for its scruffy, unfussy comfort. I work from home in a small room the size of Robert De Niro's prison cell in Cape Fear, and every afternoon around 3pm, I begin to crave a break. And so I go to one of the three outlets within walking distance of my flat, I buy my inoffensive tall extra-hot latte, collapse into one of its purple, upholstered armchairs, and lose myself in a paperback book. I must admit to finding it all pretty relaxing.

In other words, then, I have succumbed to founder Howard Schultz's notion of Starbucks as "the third place" – a location that is neither work nor home, but contains elements of both and acts as a refuge from either. I'm clearly not alone, because Starbucks has come a long way since its humble Seattle beginnings in 1971. Whether we like it or not, it is now part of our daily lives. There are 455 branches across the UK, while according to its online store locator, London enjoys the second highest Starbucks density in the world.

But what, precisely, is the secret of its almighty allure? There must be more to its appeal than just heavily frayed armchairs, no?

According to Cathy Heseltine, marketing director for Starbucks UK, the answer is yes. "We simply offer a nice, daily experience for people," she says, "and we have become, in some way, completely indispensable to many."

OK, then. Feeling ever so slightly intrepid and Morgan Spurlock-y (the US documentary-maker whose Super Size Me proved that gorging on McDonald's makes you puke), I decide to spend a day visiting a cross-section of the capital's branches to gauge just how much it enriches one very specific life: mine.

I start my trek at a tiny branch in the heart of the City. Despite the time (it's only just gone 9am), the place is full of suits, each of whom, by rights, should be fiddling with the FTSE rather than dawdling over arabica beans. I order an espresso whose timidity Italians would scoff at, and learn a valuable lesson during the consumption of my all-day breakfast panini (bacon, eggs, beans) to never, ever eat one again. It tastes like mulch.

Over the speakers, meanwhile, floods evidence of another the brand's success stories: music. Last year, Genius Loves Company, the Grammy-winning Ray Charles album, sold more copies here (700,000) than it did in HMV, while Alanis Morissette's acoustic version of Jagged Little Pill is a Starbucks exclusive for its first two months of release in the US and Canada. This has caused something of an uproar in Canada with HMV refusing to stock any of her work as a result. But Starbucks does have standards. The latest Bruce Springsteen, for example, entitled Devils And Dust, has been banned because one of its songs refers to an encounter with a prostitute. Starbucks as moral guardian? Good God, that's enough to make anybody choke on their tazo chai tea latte.

Come lunchtime, I brave the forever chaotic New Oxford Street branch and find it swarming with teenage Spaniards dressed in loud primary colours. The upper floor is carnage, the room strewn with coffee-related debris, the volume of Catalan chatter ear-piercingly loud. I take my chicken salsa wrap (a steep £3.25) to a corner stool, and attempt, vainly, to concentrate on the task at hand. I don't ask much from sandwiches – width, weight and a sliver of tomato normally suffices – and this one suits me fine. It is only lightly spiced, and that's just as well because spice affects me much like a red rag, literally speaking, does a bull: it gives me the trots. But my appetite is doomed amid such surroundings. The store's ambience has now reached pandemonium level, and so I wolf and flee.

On my way out, I notice the bedraggled staff looking increasingly red-cheeked and ready to blow. Silently, I bestow them my blessings.

Allotting several hours to recover in the peaceful haven of a nearby park, I browse some of the countless leaflets they insist on producing but that nobody, surely, actually reads. "The leaflets are simply to inform people about what we do," Cathy Heseltine explains, "because there are misconceptions. It's our subtle way to explain what we are really like, should anybody be interested."

And so I learn, for example, that I can use the place as a "HotSpot", surfing the net on my laptop from morning til night, should I so desire. I learn how many calories exist within my latte (200), and I immerse myself in their Guide To Whole Bean Selections, which regales me with the news that many of its seasonal blends – from Africa, Asia, and Latin America – are Fair Trade and, consequently, Chris Martin-friendly.

But are its drinks, especially those that come served in vast venti mugs, having a detrimental effect on our health? We are drinking an awful lot of them, after all. Ian Marber, a nutrition * consultant from The Food Doctor clinic in London, thinks not.

"Of course, too much coffee can be bad for you," he says, "but Starbucks is absolutely on a par with everybody else's coffee [in terms of calorific content]. "

Marber, it transpires, is a Starbucks regular. "Mine is a double tall soya latte," he says, "but one of my colleagues here always goes for a triple caramel macchiato. She may as well go and buy a big bag of sugar from Tesco and mix it with water. That's definitely not healthy, but then that's caffeine for you. Addictive."

By late afternoon, I'm in the Marylebone High Street branch, surrounded by upwardly mobile mothers toting Blackberrys and 4x4 prams, the very presence of whom offers proof of the place's classless appeal. Up in Manchester, a Starbucks barista told me they had to keep the public lavatory permanently locked because some untrusty locals were using it to shoot up in. How's that for a broad demographic?

In Marylebone, no one is here to shoot up. Instead, we are all enjoying our frappuccinos, a drink that even ardent Starbucks haters are secretly thrilled by. These flavoured crushed-ice drinks may well cost a small fortune (from £2.35 to £3.30), but they are as satisfying as ice-cream, and infinitely superior to the disappointing array of standard-issue desserts and cookies.

But by now, I'm seriously flagging. I'm off to Milan in the morning, where coffee tastes like a delicacy, and frankly I can't wait. Excessive exposure to these jazz-soaked surroundings, where every branch looks like the one before, has given me Groundhog Day delirium, and I have had enough. As soon as my legs find the gumption to lift me from this upholstered chair, then that's it, I'm out of here. But it is difficult. If only they weren't so damn comfortable.

STARBUCKS IN NUMBERS

From www.starbucks.com

As of 29 May 2005, there were 9,481 branches of Starbucks in the world.

Starbucks is currently seen in 34 countries outside America, and opened 1,344 stores worldwide in 2004.

Starbucks plans to open approximately 1,500 new stores globally in 2005, and increase total revenues by approximately 20 per cent.

In February 2005 it announced that its long-term plan of opening 25,000 stores worldwide had increased to 30,000, with at least 15,000 outside America.

The company has appeared in Fortune Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" for seven years. Its highest ranking has been 11.

Starbucks has promised that in 2005, it will buy 10 million pounds of Fair Trade Certified coffee. According to TransFair USA, this amount would account for about 25 per cent of all Fair Trade coffee imported into America this year.

If all of the frappuccino blended beverages sold in 2004 were placed in a line, they would stretch for 14,000 miles, which is more than halfway around the world.

2004 was the 13th consecutive year in which Starbucks saw sales growth of 5 per cent or more.