Personal-finance writers, whose “how to save money” articles always suggest eliminating the daily four-buck latte.

Stand-up comedians, who have made joke-fodder out of the brand’s nomenclature—And what’s the deal with Starbucks? They call their “small” coffee a “tall”!—the way air travel and Gilligan’s Island were flogged years earlier.

Neither enemy seriously hurt the brand, though—Starbucks loyalists continued to crave its caffeine-delivery system. But other brands that happen to sell fresh coffee, such as Dunkin’ Donuts, have attempted to erode the Seattle brand’s dominance.

Enter Ronald
In 1993, McDonald’s launched its golden-arches version of a coffeehouse, McCafé, in Melbourne, Australia, and now there are more than 1,300 worldwide, including Singapore, South Africa and Germany. Although the extension has had a US presence since 2001, only recently has McDonald’s begun a major American McCafé push, including placing McCafés in all its Chicago restaurants by the beginning of this year.

The brand extension’s web presence is, so far, muted. There’s no McCafé mention on either the customer or corporate McDonald’s site. What comes closest to a main McCafé site, myMcCafe.com, acts as a “coming soon” page for a rollout in several parts of the Midwest. Another teaser site, wakeuptowhatsnew.com, allows you to “draw” on a cup of espresso with a stream of steamed-milk foam.

The most notable site for US-based McCafés is unsnobbycoffee.com, which complements a series of mocking billboards placed in the heart of Starbucks country. “No crazy names or sizes,” announces the homepage. “No second language required.”

If your friend suffers from an addiction to “snobby iced espresso,” you can stage an “intervention” with an online version of Magnetic Poetry meets Mad Libs: choose from a selection of words (including sweet, snooty and bootylicious) and drag them over to the blank parts of a prewritten e-mail begging him to change his snobby-coffee ways.

After All, It’s Just Flavored Water
Those who lump coffee into more than two categories (e.g., good/bad, hot/cold) can surf the lush Starbucks site for a coffee education and learn about the “journey” of coffee “from the tree in the country of origin to the cup in your hand.” Read the 600-word “history of coffee” and follow up with “the roast story,” absorb the four fundamentals for a great cup of joe and understand why some disparate beans are blended while other coffees remain single-origin.

But if you’re not the coffee-quaffer who sips a double-espresso and sighs triumphantly through pursed lips while tipping your barista and musing, I sense the tangy brightness of Costa Rica, then you’ll appreciate unsnobbycoffee.com’s just-the-facts drink menu. You won’t learn the beans’ pedigree—they could have been grown in a New Jersey hothouse—but the blueprints that deconstruct seven McCafé beverages dispel any intimidating aura surrounded exotic-sounding specialty drinks. What’s actually in a latte, you ask? See the line drawing of the cup with the bottom third marked “espresso” and the top two-thirds labeled “steamed milk”? Mystery solved.

Though the site lists just the 150 or so McCafés in the Seattle area, it could easily be rolled out to cover the rest of the US, if not all of North America. And based on Starbucks’ response to other upstart coffee players (i.e., little to none), don’t expect a retort a la Microsoft’s “I’m a PC.”

That doesn’t mean that Starbucks won’t have to adapt, however. Sites like unsnobbycoffee.com are a reminder that coffeehouses can come in more than one flavor. Likewise, while the unsnobbycoffee.com site is a fun introduction, the McCafé brand has to demonstrate its value and appeal beyond being a cheap antidote to Starbucks, an accessible luxury that’s still very accessible—and popular.