What Wolfgang Puck Really Thinks About Starbucks

Starbucks is to coffee as Chick-fil-A is to chicken nuggets — it's what the popular brands do best. Since the Seattle-based java brand first opened its doors in Pike Place Market in 1971, it's grown to become the most well-known coffee retailer in America and arguably even the world. Not only is it valued at nearly $48 billion in revenue (via Capital Counselor), but according to USA Today, Starbucks sells some 4 million coffee drinks per day. That's a lot of lattes. 

And it's really no wonder that the retailer has such broad appeal — there are allegedly 87,000 combinations of drinks you can order, from pumpkin spice lattes to basic black coffee (via Urban Bean Coffee). But not everyone is a Starbucks coffee fan. Celebrity chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck has some strong, and not exactly positive, opinions on the popular chain. Here's what the James Beard Award winner really thinks about Starbucks.

Of all the millions of people that visit a Starbucks drive-thru on the daily, Wolfgang Puck likely isn't among them. "It's terrible coffee!" the chef told Culturemap Houston in an interview. "Like when I fly on United Airlines they say, 'We proudly serve Starbucks coffee.' I said they should say, 'We are embarrassed to serve Starbucks coffee.'" Wolfgang is so passionate about his daily cup of joe that he recently started his own brand of coffee — Wolfgang Puck Culinary Iced Coffee — which he believes is better than the green mermaid's brand (via Eater). "To me, coffee is a way of life," he explained.

In the same interview with Culturemap, however, he confessed that his coffee standards aren't exactly normal, "I'm very peculiar about [coffee], I like it a certain way, and everyone isn't going to like it the way I like it." So you may want to take his opinion with a grain of salt (or perhaps a grain of sugar, in this case).