The Falcons First Bite recently reviewed the Starbucks located in the Brambleton Town Center, inside the Harris Teeter. For context, these reviews were made for the students and faculty of Briar Woods High School.
In order for a proper review, the Falcons: Srilekha Simhadri and Anannya Jadhav, juniors, evaluated the establishment based on four factors. These factors were created in order to repeat the same fashion with other restaurants, to ensure a fair and trustworthy rating for each dine in experience. These four factors are service, ambience, taste, and versatility. Since it is for the holidays, they specifically only judged based on holiday flavors.
Service quality can be defined as the respectfulness, responsiveness, and informational side that a restaurant/cafe has. In order for a cafe’s experience to be uplifting and memorable, it needs to have these qualities. The Brambleton Town Center’s Starbucks can often be very busy especially during school hours. As a result of this, Anannya and Srilekha have found that orders take more than 10 minutes, and the workers can get a little bit angry. However, the service quality on other days and timings can be really amazing! In fact, on most days it takes about 2 minutes maximum, and the workers are always very sweet and talkative.
Next, the Falcons assessed the restaurant’s ambience. Ambience can be defined as the character and atmosphere of a specific environment. Overall, the ambience especially during the Christmas and holiday times is nice. The Starbucks puts the Christmas decor up, and the new renovations to the shop make it look so pretty and also very cozy. The only downside is that they close up the seating area on weekdays from 4:30 to closing time, which makes it so that most coffee drinkers cant have a seat next to the shop and enjoy their drink. Since that is the case, it is easy to say that the ambience is mediocre on most days.
“Starbucks always has such a beautiful aesthetic when it comes to the holidays. I’m always impressed by the colors each year,” said Saisree Nagarakanti, a junior at Centerville High School.
After ambience comes taste, the best and most important part. Srilekha got a hot Grande Caramel Brulee Latte with whipped cream and Anannya got a Venti Oatmilk Gingerbread Chai. These 2 drinks are specifically from the new Holiday starbucks menu. For pastries, Anannya also got the Dark Toffee Bundt Cake. To start off, the Grande Caramel Brulee Latte was very sweet. It almost had a toffee flavor to it, and the whipped cream helped balance it out a lot. This drink was very simple, but it didn’t taste much like a Brulee Flavour for Srilekha, in fact, she felt that it just had a very sweet caramel flavor in total. She rates this drink an 8 out of 10, and she would buy it again. For Anannya, the Gingerbread Chai was very nice. She thinks it has a very creative take to the flavor, as she has never seen or heard of a chai with gingerbread in it. Overall however, she feels that the Fall drinks overall are better. She rates the drink a 7.5 out of 10. Next, Anannya thought the Dark Toffee Bundt Cake was very good, but she didn’t really taste much of the toffee. She would rate this a 7 out of 10, taking points off for the lack of flavor. As a result of this taste testing round, the Falcons conclude that the Winter drinks are not only creative, but something they look forward to every holiday season. They rate the taste a 9 out of 10.
“My favorite part of the holidays is getting those snowman cake pops from starbucks, they are just so cute,” said Vishnavi Jaithavaram a junior at Briar Woods High School.
Lastly, in order for a restaurant to thrive, it must be versatile. Versatility is defined as being able to adapt to many different functions and activities, however in restaurant slang it is used as a way to see if restaurants can adapt to different diets. For the holiday drinks, versatility is definitely something that is prominently showcased. Not only do they have various different types of Coffees, ranging from different milks, flavors, and temperatures, but they also have Tea and Chai options for on Coffee drinkers. Also, this year they have one refresher or juice option which is in the holiday theme, for non caffeine drinkers as a whole. On top of that, Starbucks adds multiple holiday flavored pastries, for the pastry lovers out there. In total, Starbucks is a very versatile coffee shop, which is one of the reasons it is so popular, and its franchise is so big.
“The great selection of holiday drinks made me feel the holly jolly spirit earlier than expected this year,” said Gareth McClellan, a junior from Briar Woods High School.
All in all, the new Starbucks Holiday lineup is not just creative, but it also taste’s good! The Falcons definitely recommend going and getting a drink after school, before school, or just anytime because these flavors are one of a kind.
