Starbucks pushes their barely-roasted “blonde” brews in no uncertain terms.
Their medium roasts aren’t “burned”, more “normalized” so they can provide uniform taste on enormous scale. Pike Place is their house blend, and understandably avoided.
You have to go deep into the “dark” roasts before reaching “burned”. The regular localized dark roasts are fine (not great). French Roast is quite firmly there; as an avowed coffee snob I gave that a chance last week, and dubbed it the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had.
Point: Starbucks has a full spectrum of roasts, from hardly roasted to half charcoal, with plenty of selections in between.
For years, t’s been a fad to complain about Starbucks. If you don’t like the place don’t walk in the door and stop your whining. Regardless, most of the people who bitch about Starbucks coffee like the watered down airplane excuse for coffee.