Zagat Is Wrong: Peet's Is Better Than Starbucks

Zagat’s annual fast-food survey served up its usual batch of surprises, but one stood out for Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com fame. Somehow, some way, Starbucks beat Peet’s Coffee for best coffee chain. A travesty of that magnitude can only mean mistaken methodology, Silver contends; Starbucks is fine, but as any San Franciscan can tell you, it’s no Peet’s.

Zagat asked 6,000 people to rank the chains on a 0-to-3 scale. The trouble is that Peet’s has only about 200 stores, to 11,000 Starbucks, so the Seattle java giant gets far more ratings. Silver’s guessing that in a heads-up match with people who’ve tried both, Peet’s would win. To test his theory, he checked Yelp. Sure enough, they’re even overall, but among the 11 who’ve reviewed both, Peet’s dominates. (More Starbucks stories.)