9 Things Dunkin' Does Better Than Starbucks

If you want a great cup of coffee you don't have to make at home, your best bet is probably to go to a small, locally owned coffee shop — preferably one where you know that workers are treated fairly and paid a living wage (and the beans are sourced sustainably to boot). Sometimes, though, you may default to a chain coffee shop out of a desire for convenience or price. In that case, there are two national brands in the U.S. that dominate the market: Dunkin' and Starbucks. Whether you're a diehard Dunkin' fan (looking at you, Massachusites) or you've just recently responded to the massive and prolonged calls for boycotts of Starbucks, you may be wondering how Dunkin' stacks up against its biggest competitor.

Dunkin' isn't a perfect company, as evidenced by its egregious labor rights violations and its unfortunately frequent sin of pouring diabolical ratios of coffee to creamer, but in many ways, it does outpace its Seattle-based counterpart. The following are just a few of the things that the donut-turned-coffee fast-food breakfast chain does better than Starbucks.

If you're trying to save money on your morning cup of joe, you're generally better off going to Dunkin' than you are making a Starbucks stop. Of course, this doesn't apply to every single drink in every single instance. For example, if you always order a plain black drip coffee from Starbucks but you're going all out with the latest seasonal drinks at Dunkin', there's a good chance that you're going to pay more for the latter. All things equal, though, Dunkin' tends to be less expensive. In fact, you could save $100 a year just by switching from Starbucks to Dunkin'.

Let's be honest: Getting coffee out instead of simply making it at home is a luxury, and it's a luxury you're going to pay a premium for. If you are going to indulge in a coffee away from home on a regular basis, though, it makes sense to do so in a way that's going to break the bank as little as possible. And if Dunkin' helps you do that, then it seems like a better option for the more budget-conscious among us.

On the food front, there is absolutely no competition: Dunkin' wins every single time. You may know about Dunkin' from its impeccable donut game, but it also does savory food better than its competitor, too. Starbucks offers a host of breakfast items that seem good in theory, but when you actually try them, you'll find that they're worse than most frozen breakfast sandwiches you can find at the grocery store. Starbucks makes an attempt to make its food look higher end — hence the Gouda and pesto on some of the chain's sandwiches — but that attempt absolutely falls flat on the flavor front.

On the other hand, Dunkin's breakfast offerings may not seem as fancy, but they taste significantly better than their bougier counterpart. The sourdough breakfast sandwich, for example, actually tastes fresh, not like it was just microwaved within an inch of its life. Plus, it offers the kind of hearty sides and snacks you actually want from a fast food place, like hash browns and its snackin' bacon. And for a fast food breakfast spot, its avocado toast is absolutely delicious with its base of squishy sourdough bread and creamy avocado spread.

But it's not just Dunkin's savory food that's better than what you'll find at Starbucks. The breakfast chain also takes the cake (pun intended) when it comes to sweeter offerings as well. This should be expected, of course, since the Dunkin' empire is built on the foundation of its donuts. Walk into a Dunkin', and those multitudes of donuts are likely what you'll see before anything else. With so many different flavors to choose from, dessert seems like it's just part of an experience at Dunkin' — not an afterthought like a Starbucks cake pop.

But Dunkin' doesn't just boast a long list of donuts to choose from. Its muffins are also top-notch if you're looking for something different. The blueberry and chocolate chip muffins are classic, of course, but our favorites have to be the corn and coffee cake muffins, which make for a filling, sweet breakfast (or breakfast dessert, if you really want to go all out). Despite Starbucks trying to show off with its baked apple and chocolate croissants, it really can't compete with the delicious simplicity of what Dunkin' has to offer when it comes to sweet treats.

With some coffee drinks, the cup size doesn't really matter. Take an espresso, for instance — you're going to get the same amount of coffee regardless of how big the cup is. When it comes to other drinks, though, the size of your cup really can make a big difference. For example, when you're super tired and you need a serious pick-me-up, you probably want your iced coffee to come in a hefty cup instead of one that barely packs the caffeine you need to make it through the rest of your day.

If you're the kind of person who likes to get more bang for their buck when you're ordering coffee, you're probably going to appreciate Dunkin's larger cup sizes. A large iced drink at Dunkin', for example, comes out to 32 ounces. By contrast, Starbucks' largest iced drink size is just 30 ounces. The largest hot coffee option at Starbucks comes out to 24 ounces, while you'll get 32 ounces of coffee if you order the largest size at Dunkin'. It seems like there's a clear winner here if you care about how much coffee you're getting in your cup when you order from either of these coffee chains.

Since its inception, Starbucks has tried to curate an atmosphere similar to what you might expect from a small local coffee shop. But Starbucks literally couldn't be further from an actual small local coffee shop — it's a mega-corporation that's invaded nearly every city and town across the country (and much of the world). Ultimately, it's just a fast-food coffee chain, and its pretentious attempt to portray itself as something different than that is insulting to actual small coffee shops everywhere.

On the other hand, Dunkin' knows exactly what it is. Is it the kind of place you want to sit with your laptop to work while you sip your coffee? Not exactly. But why would you? It's a fast-food restaurant, and that's exactly what it acts and looks like. Dunkin', unlike Starbucks, isn't trying to act like it's anything it's not. And it's that honesty, that earnestness, that makes us enjoy the atmosphere of Dunkin' so much more than that of try-hard Starbucks.

If you visit most fast food places often enough (and you use that restaurant's app), you're likely going to be eligible for rewards. These may not seem like a big deal if you only visit a restaurant a few times a year, but when you're going regularly, those reward points can definitely add up. Dunkin' and Starbucks' rewards programs are somewhat similar, and it's hard to say that one is absolutely better than the other. For example, there's a good chance that you'll get better drinks rewards when you buy from Starbucks.

But when it comes to food, Dunkin' has the better rewards program. And considering that Dunkin's food is generally better than the food you'll find at Starbucks, it's definitely worth taking advantage of. Whether this is helpful or not depends on how much you're actually buying breakfast or lunch at Dunkin' as opposed to just grabbing a coffee, but maybe knowing that Dunkin' offers good food rewards will prompt you to pick up a breakfast sandwich the next time you're there.

Everyone likes their coffee prepared differently, so you really have to visit both of these chains and order the coffee you like to drink to get a good sense of which chain offers the best coffee according to your personal taste. However, according to a Mashed comparison of a variety of different coffee drinks at both chains, Dunkin' comes out the winner the majority of the time. Dunkin's cold brew came out on top, which may mean that Dunkin' is the better place to go when the temps climb so high that the thought of drinking a hot coffee turns your stomach, and the chain's latte also scored a win over Starbucks' version of the drink.

Dunkin' also took the point for the best caramel drink, beating out the iconic iced caramel macchiato from Starbucks, as well as the Americano. Starbucks claimed a few wins over Dunkin' coffees too, but overall, the article determined that Dunkin' does, in fact, have better coffee. Is this a controversial claim? Maybe. But it's one that we fully stand behind as Dunkin' fans.

Recently, Starbucks has started requiring baristas to write on customer's cups. Instead of writing people's names on the cups, which was standard until relatively recently, baristas are now asked to write friendly or encouraging messages on the cups instead (probably because names were often spelled incorrectly). Apparently, baristas are already annoyed at the requirement, and those of us who are allergic to gimmicky corporate behavior share that annoyance. We don't exactly want to wait longer for our barista to think up and scribble out a message on our coffee cups when we're in a rush on our way to work in the morning — we're just trying to get our coffee and go.

Dunkin' doesn't seem to engage in the same cringy, gimmicky behavior, and for that, we are grateful. You can just walk into a Dunkin', grab your coffee order, and get out the door without forcing a lethargic teenager to work above their pay grade. Call us boring, but we don't need our coffee served with a side of gimmicks.

If you've been to Starbucks more than a handful of times, you've probably had the experience of being behind a customer in line who requests a longer list of customizations to their drink than you ever could've imagined would be possible. This is largely due to the fact that Starbucks offers a lot of customizable options compared to Dunkin'. We can imagine that those customizations are annoying to the baristas working at Starbucks, but it's also annoying if you have to wait longer for your drink simply because someone ahead of you can't just order their coffee as it's written on the menu. (And no, we're not talking about the people who simply ask for non-dairy milk or sugar-free sweetener, but rather those who have a laundry list of changes they want to make to an otherwise simple coffee drink.)

At Dunkin', you don't have to deal with that nonsense most of the time since there are fewer options for customization. That means you can get your black cold brew and get on your way without hearing someone rattle on about the latest Starbucks secret menu item that you know the barista is internally rolling their eyes at.