7-Eleven has joined the parade of chains hoping to grab a slice of the coffee market from Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts with a new recession-busting cup of iced coffee.
The convenience store's small iced coffee (16 oz.) is 99 cents and comes in mocha and French vanilla. It's dispensed pre-mixed from a "fill and chill" machine that advises buyers to "not forget the ice!"
This was the first iced coffee I've made outside of my own house, and the warning made me wonder whether it was the average customer's first iced coffee ever. The ice comes from the adjacent soda machine. I put in close to a half a cup of ice, not knowing how cold the coffee mixture would be, but I think about one-third of a cup is a better place to start.
I had an iced coffee and was back in my car in just over two minutes -- that includes some internal debate over which flavor to pick, as well as finding the machine. So, one point for 7-Eleven: It is convenient.
Sadly, a lot was sacrificed to get me back in my car in under two minutes. With ice in the cup, I opted for mocha and chose poorly. The color was right -- a light muddy brown -- but it tasted like a cold version of a chalky, vending-machine hot chocolate. The coffee was overwhelmed by a big burst of chocolate and I still tasted hints of vanilla, despite leaving the French vanilla dispenser untouched. Instead of the smooth finish of a well-steeped iced coffee, I felt a drying on my tongue.
Iced coffee seems to be part of convenience stores' new push toward affordable luxury. Outside the regular pastry case, there were two kinds of individually packaged cupcakes on the counter -- red velvet and frosted chocolate. At $1.49, they were priced well below specialty bakeries.
But you don't go to convenience stores for luxury items. (My brother-in-law once went into his corner store for a bag of flour and picked up the biggest bag because his wife was making a large batch of cookies. The cashier told him to buy a smaller bag because the bigger bags always had bugs.) Nobody buys the big-ticket items at convenience stores, so when 7-Eleven tried to lower the price point on iced coffee, it had to make some compromises. In this case, it's a little thing called taste.
If you need a caffeine fix, stick with what 7-Eleven does best -- the Big Gulp. It's not even two cents an ounce at its current promotional price of 49 cents for 32 ounces.
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