Here’s how you can get me back to Starbucks (…and it’s not with a venti blonde macchiato)

There’s a scene in Shrek 2 where a giant gingerbread man approaches a branch of Starbucks and rips the white styrofoam cup off the storefront. Terrified, the coffee-drinkers within run screaming out onto the street and – you guessed it – over the road, straight into another branch of Starbucks. Order is restored. Phew.

Welcome to just one of the many things I loathe about the high-street symbol of corporate greed that is Starbucks, which currently has 1,320 branches in the UK, almost three times the number of Prets.

Turns out, I might not be alone. The coffee retailer has just reported a fall in global sales of seven per cent in the three months to the end of September, while profits are 25 per cent lower than the same period a year ago. New chief executive Brian Niccol has declared that the chain needs to “fundamentally change” its strategy, simplify its “overly complex menu” and rethink its pricing to win customers over.

I’d say they could afford to go right back to basics. I know that coffee, like wine, owes much to personal taste, but the sheer number of us who wouldn’t set foot in a Starbucks owing to the over-roasted, bitter taste of the beverage itself, indicates they’re getting something very wrong. They don’t make coffee, so much as the dark liquid in the bottom of the washing up bowl after you’ve scraped out a burnt roasting tin.

I don’t want to queue for a venti blonde lungo soya Macchiato, extra hot, vegan whipped topping with no foam (a genuine order, believe it or not). Nor do I think the chain’s pumpkin spice latte being released “earlier than ever!” – on August 22nd this year – is something to boast about. Sod the frills if you can’t get the fundamentals right.

How the heart sinks when you walk into a service station, airport terminal or railway platform only to find that the only source of caffeine is a Starbucks. I’d rather go without. A friend tells me that she was held hostage in Glasgow airport last year and, in desperation, ventured a cheese toastie. “It was much worse than I thought it was going to be. So processed and unpleasant, with about 50 ingredients,” she says. “They can’t even get that right.”

Then there are the employees. Look, it’s not really their fault that the twee practice of writing one’s name on the cup doesn’t work. They never get it right and it practically encourages over the counter conflict. My friend Amelia always gives her name as “Sally”, while Philippa goes by Kate to avoid heated exchanges.

And to think that Starbucks used to be cool. As a teenager, ordering a frappuccino with whipped cream and owning one of those giant white mugs emblazoned with the smug green mermaid was the height of sophistication (bonus points if you’d bought it on holiday in America).

It’s all been downhill from there. In 2015, Starbucks was voted one of the UK’s most hated brands, alongside Ukip. In 2012, it was found to have paid only £8.6m in UK taxes on sales of £3bn since 1998. A newspaper investigation in 2008 found that the chain was wasting 23.4m litres of water every day due to a policy of leaving the taps running – although today the company says 98 per cent of its coffee is ethically sourced, while there are targets on its emissions, energy and water usage. Best not mention that Niccol was granted permission to commute from his home in California to the Starbucks HQ in Seattle by private jet, then.

Today, my local branch is more like a shiny co-working space. Critics complain that the comfy leather chairs have been replaced by wooden ones, while the baristas are too frantic with app and drive-thru orders to be friendly. “We know [customers] expect our stores to look and feel like the community coffee house they remember,” Niccol has said with one eye on his planned revamp, the other on his $1.6m salary plus bonuses.

Can he turn Starbucks around for haters like me? Here’s a tip: I just want to go into a coffee shop and order a non-burnt, non-bucket sized drink that doesn’t cost £6. Is that really too much to ask?