It wasn’t that Starbucks invented expensive cups of coffee – there have been coffee shops and cafes around the world for well over a century.

But, in 1954, you couldn’t get an expensive cup of coffee on every street in midtown Manhattan, every strip mall in Southern California or every other town everywhere else.

When you think about it, what Starbucks did is pretty remarkable.

Before it showed up, you picked up a cup of coffee at the place where you got breakfast – unless you made breakfast at home. If you brought coffee into work, it was from a cart on the street or a Thermos from home. You paid $1 tops.

And it was always coffee. Not dark roast or light roast or Sumatra or cappuccino with foam.

It also came in small, medium and large.

Starbucks made people drink lattes that cost $6 each. It mixed in expresso shots or vanilla syrup. It decorated the foam at the top of the cup. It fresh ground the beans in the store. It started the autumn pumpkin spice craze. And it made you use some contrived Italian name to order it. If you can get out of there without spending $10, consider yourself lucky.

When I worked at CNN’s New York headquarters in Columbus Circle, there was a Starbucks across from the employee entrance on W. 58th Street. There was one on the other side of the Time Warner Center complex on the corner of W. 60th and Broadway. There was other on the next block over at Ninth Avenue and W. 59th Street.

And, in case you missed any of them, there was a Starbucks-franchised coffee stand outside the building’s 10th floor cafeteria.

People would come into the office after stopping for a frappuccino grande or a venti Americano. The cup was ubiquitous, a sign that the drinker was above that sludge in the break room.

Soon, little coffee stands tried to up their game, creating many of the same drinks that drew people to Starbucks. And coffee-and-pastry places sprang up to challenge: Paris Baguette, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Blue Bottle, Peet’s. 

And, of course, the other caffeine-and-sugar fixture of our times: Dunkin’. They’ve been around forever, but mainly for the doughnuts – oops, donuts. The quality of the pastry has declined over the years as the emphasis fell on drinks.

I do not know if my father ever went to a Starbucks. My mother didn’t drink coffee, but I got her hooked on the chai tea latte. Something she loved, but never had, until there were Starbucks even in her hometown.