The Coffeehouse

I'm becoming a bit frugal ... or maybe thrifty is the word? I don't get coffee all that often, too much caffeine does bad things to my system. That being said, my husband stopped drinking coffee a while back ... and he had previously been the type to drink several cups a day, so we had a large coffee pot. When he stopped drinking coffee, I was having one heck of a time making a tasty 2-cup pot of Joe. But even then, I was wasting it because I typically only have one cup. And then? Someone wonderful gave us (well, me, I guess ... since I'm the only one that drinks coffee every once in a blue) a Keurig coffee brewer. In the long run, it just didn't make sense to me to purchase coffee at Starbucks at $3.48/cup when I could very easily make a cup of coffe at home.

Except ... here's the thing. Starbucks is a love/hate relationship with people. But my theory is that I see no point in buying coffee when I could make the same thing for less money at home. IE: Dunkin Doughnuts coffee. French vanilla beans + cream/sugar? That I can do at home. Especially if they sell their beans in the grocery store.

But Starbucks?
Well, I don't have vanilla or toffee nut syrup. And I also don't have the ability to make foam in my coffee. Not that I haven't tried or anything.
But Starbucks? MMM ... it just makes me happy.

So here's the question. Why is it that I could have the exact same beans and the exact same coffee brewer ... and the cup of coffee I get at the coffeehouse will always taste better? Is there some mystical coffee house magic that I'm just not aware of? Or is it the simple fact that I didn't have to take the 2 or 3 minutes to make my own cup of coffee?