I don't know who these "millennials" are - I gather they are natives and residents of a continent to the West of the Atlantic , but that's all I know of them - but I avoid all those up-to-a-price, down-to-a-value chain cafes as far as possible.
I don't even use them in motorway service areas, thanks to their silly prices - I take a flask of hot water and beverage makings in the car.
I like good coffee but have no objections to instant, but I object to paying a lot of money for half a cup of froth served with a silly swirl of chocolate powder on top, and given a pseudo-Italian name, when all I want is a cup of coffee with a dash of milk and sugar. I had the following conversation late one night when all that was available was a Costa - which I call 'Costalotta' - in a M-way services.
Young Man behind the counter: "Can I help you?"
Me: "Just a mug of plain coffee please."
YM, after looking baffled for a few moments, "Do you mean an "Americano'?"
"If you like."
He poured it and I handed over the money. "I don't know why I have to learn cod-Italian just to ask for a coffee!"
YM: "We're an Italian firm!"
Me: "Oh no you aren't. Costa is a branch of Whitbreads!" (A British former brewing company that closed its breweries and moved into pure pub and café ownership, aka property speculation). "And I wouldn't mind these prices so much if I thought they pay their staff a decent wage!"
It appears to me, correctly or not, as a foreigner who's never visited the USA but gains impressions from News reports and discussion-sites like this, that "millennial" is a term of abuse by Americans about fellow-Americans who dared to be born in the "wrong" decades and developed the "wrong" political or social ideals.!
I don't know what the "wrong" ages and ideas may be, but those are their and their critics' business, not mine.
Well, obviously anyone can apply that notion anywhere - it would mean me avoiding a café I use occasionally because it is in, and supports, a local church - so avoiding cafes whose products you enjoy, merely because they might attract the "wrong" but harmless fellow-customers, does seem rather self-defeating.....
It is an "in" joke about the youth of America. We have had jokes about every aspect of our culture and people of certain decades fit certain jokes. Baby boomers are those of us who were born after 1948 until about 1960 or so.
There are tons of jokes about every group of people born in a certain time frame.
Ah, I see! Thankyou! I expect every country has similar humour - there's plenty of it in Britain, where we also use "baby boomer" though usually as a linguistic convenience in fairly serious ways such as public discussions about pensions.
I did appreciate the OP was probably being humorous. There is a Starbucks in my town in S. England, and I think I used it once either from curiosity or because most other cafes had closed for the night. There was nothing wrong with the quality of the coffee and cake, and the place proudly displayed its 5-star food-hygiene rating from the council, but they were pricey and I prefer individual to chain outlets anyway.
I don't avoid it. Sometimes it hits the spot when no other coffee is waking me up.
Since I live in Sun City, there are NO millenials. If you go to the Starbucks in Sun City, you get the oldsters with their computers and their free wi-fi sitting in chairs on the inside of the store, or reading one of the many books they donated in the little library around the chairs. Great works like old romance best-sellers from 1990.
No millenials though. No millenial would darken that door.
I avoid all these chains as much as possible! Their British outlets at least are over-priced despite probably paying their staff little more than the National Minimum Wage (or whatever it's called now), and pretentiously trendy; banking on being American to attract custom.
The UK equivalent is the pseudo-Italian 'Costa', a branch of the former brewer, Whitbreads. I call it 'Costalotta'.
I was though amused but also somewhat saddened once by overhearing a mother asking her young son, "Shall we be naughty and greasy and eat in there, or go to MacDonalds'?"
"There" was an independent café in which I had just enjoyed a healthy poached egg on toast and pot of tea... all right I failed to resist the more calorific sticky bun too, but the food was well cooked and of fair price.
My brother-in-law told me he was amused by a friend who when on holiday on Italy, asked for a "latte" in a local café, and was puzzled to find it contained no coffee.
Durdle 