Starbucks — Restaurant in Punjab

This used to be my favorite place to read, journal, get some work did for an hour or 2 but unfortunately they don’t seem receptive to and rather disrespectful of people who want to get work did over here on a semi-regular basis. I guess that’s a cultural difference because I have spent decades in US and Germany and currently spending my time in Amritsar until summer before I go back to Berlin. The western Starbucks usually don’t care for who orders what and sits for how long, if anything I have mostly been a barista fav regular at any Berlin/California Starbucks I have spent time in - making friendships, being their fav face/person who shows up on the regular.

The baristas and manager minni is rude and can be obnoxious if you don’t want to buy a meal to go with your drink. They make snarky remarks and gave rude looks which made me rush out within 15 minutes of my last study sesh, that I came with an intention to atleast spend an hour on, as cafes make me productive.

I can understand they may have personal targets and sales quotas to meet where in they upsell customers on a food item with their drink but even if they were to do the math on losing someone like me who comes in upwards of 2-3x a week and orders an americano which is 260-300 rs per cup, I’d still be making them 800-1000 rs a week (and 3k-4k a month)

And it never has been the case that I was blocking/taking up space of a higher paying customer because the cafe is half empty most of the time.

Maybe their behavior is not out of ordinary and just indicative of Amritsar/Punjab as a whole being quite an elitist town and I have lost touch of this blatantly rude and discriminatory behavior having lived out of India for so long.

Nonetheless I found it rude and obnoxious. I guess the only good thing that came out of this experience is, I’ll now be going beyond my comfort zone and looking for other coffee shops that may provide just as much of a productive/work-inducive environment minus the rude...

Despite being from the US, my wife and I have always been simpletons and Starbucks has always been more of a luxury service for us. We are occasional customers because if we weren't and visited it every day, then we'd probably have to sell our house to pay for all that Starbucks treatment. My wife and I had never visited a Starbucks in Punjab so we decided to give the Ranjit Avenue, Amritsar location a shot. They have one guard managing the parking in front and another guard just for opening the door. Very fancy. We spent a few minutes staring at the menu item prices while questioning why we decided to visit. Like Apple, Starbucks also speaks the luxury language. It didn't seem economical to order any of the food items (We go through the same thought process in the US). We are not cheap, we just like to analyze the worth of everything. I ordered my all-time favorite White Chocolate Mocha (tall) and my wife ordered some seasonal-looking drink called Strawberry Pie Cream Frappuccino (tall). Drinks arrived and we took all the photos we wanted to show our relatives how (not so) rich we are. We both liked our drinks and I found the taste of my Mocha pretty similar to the US version.

I would say that we received the same treatment we are accustomed to in the US but for some reason I wished if the prices in India could be a little lower than the US ones. Overall, it was a good experimental visit but we'd probably avoid it in the future just to avoid...

Finally Starbucks in the city...... .................................................................................................................................................................................... Definitely worth a visit .................................................................................................................................................................................... It's is good cuz its Starbucks .................................................................................................................................................................................... Try snacks as...