My snobbish take that always gets downvoted was that you couldn't get a good cup of coffee in NYC during the 1990s. [1] There seemed to be two or three Starbucks on most blocks, probably because they thought they could fool stock market analysts into thinking it was that way coast to coast (like Duane Reade?) Independent espresso bars, which you could find in any mid-sized city in a flyover state by then, were driven out and you were left with bodegas and Jewish delis that served terrible gas station coffee at best.
opened up a shop in Brooklyn and won an award for best coffee in the city, half because they have great coffee, half because they had no competition. It is better now, but the standard for gas station coffee is vastly higher thanks to things like
[1] An astonishing hotbed of conformity. Sitting out in front of the headquarters of Fox News I was told that my wife and I were the freakiest looking people they'd seen in NYC and we only had matching costumes of t-shirts, jeans, ALICE packs and boonie caps with plastic flowers.
Not long after, this Ithaca company
https://gimmecoffee.com/
opened up a shop in Brooklyn and won an award for best coffee in the city, half because they have great coffee, half because they had no competition. It is better now, but the standard for gas station coffee is vastly higher thanks to things like
https://concordiacoffee.com/products-tag/convenience-stores/
[1] An astonishing hotbed of conformity. Sitting out in front of the headquarters of Fox News I was told that my wife and I were the freakiest looking people they'd seen in NYC and we only had matching costumes of t-shirts, jeans, ALICE packs and boonie caps with plastic flowers.