As someone who also only drinks black coffee I agree. Their signature taste is literally burnt because of the way they roast their beans. It's terrible.

Yes, true of most any national/international chain.

It's because they value large volume, year round availability, and high consistency from their beans and roasts, so that no matter what location you go to it tastes exactly the same.

To do that, they select and blend several bland varieties of coffee bean, put them through an aggressive industrial cleaning and drying (which reduces the natural fruity and funky flavors but minimizes costs) then roast them in huge batches to several steps past where a normal roaster would stop for a given roast (a darker roast gets rid of more of the unique flavors of the coffee cherry and brings out more uniform roast flavors instead).

Again, not something exclusive to Starbucks at all, and plenty of small coffee shops don't bother with the hassle and just buy cheap bulk coffee pre-roasted by large scale operations and will have similar results.

But man, when you get coffee made in small batches, with natural processing or even fermentation and gently roasted... It's an entirely different experience.

McDonald's has better tasting coffee than Starbucks since they swiped Tim Horton's vendor a few years ago.

In the US, it is mediocre. I wouldn't say it is terrible and if I am in a different city that lacks local shops, I'll get it. But it is definitely not my first or even 10th choice. And no, the light and medium blends do taste burnt like everyone and their mother thinks it is cool to say. Those people are almost certainly getting dark roast.

Luckily I live in Seattle and have no issue finding good roasters and cafés that are not anti union.

Their coffee in the U.S. is the worst too IMO, aside from the occasional awful gas station coffee and I wouldn't be shocked if they were buying Starbucks roast since they also sell it in bags in supermarkets. But, of course, it's like McDonald's- no matter where you go, you know what it will taste like. So people rely on it.

I avoid it as much as I possibly can (it doesn't help that I used to work on a show in L.A. that was partially sponsored by Starbucks and it was that or our other sponsor, Red Bull, if I wanted caffeine while working). The only times I go when I'm not traveling and have to make a caffeine pit stop and there are no other options is when all the other local coffee places are already closed since they all close earlier than Starbucks and I want to sit somewhere not at home to do something.

Other than that, I always go local. And here, a lot of the local places have drive-throughs, so even that convenience Starbucks offers is unnecessary. They're usually cheaper than Starbucks too. And, of course, better coffee.