Coffee is a lot like wine, in that the flavor varies a ton from farm to farm and batch to batch even based on small changes in the terroir, climate, or just randomness.
The central challenge to running any sort of mass food chain is to keep your product as consistent as possible. People expect the Starbucks drink they order when they get off the plane in Miami to taste exactly the same as they one they order back home in Boise.
In coffee, the darker the roast the more the individual characteristics of the beans are replaced by the flavors of the roast itself. Starbucks, and most mass coffee chains, char their roasts because it's a way to homogenize away the variance in terroir that comes from beans sourced across a wide range of farms and batches.
The central challenge to running any sort of mass food chain is to keep your product as consistent as possible. People expect the Starbucks drink they order when they get off the plane in Miami to taste exactly the same as they one they order back home in Boise.
In coffee, the darker the roast the more the individual characteristics of the beans are replaced by the flavors of the roast itself. Starbucks, and most mass coffee chains, char their roasts because it's a way to homogenize away the variance in terroir that comes from beans sourced across a wide range of farms and batches.