I don't think there will be a counter. I think it's more along the lines of the minibar trolley having one or two Starbucks products on offer. A bit like on Easyjet.
It's hard for someone to understand the enthusiasm of others for something they don't feel strongly about. I can talk food and drink for hours with like minded friends, and I love cultures where this is considered normal (Italy, anyone?). There is much more to it than 'like or dislike' if you have an educated and experienced palate, and finding words to describe taste is a challenge, as it is when describing music or architecture. For every snob that talks rubbish there are people who are genuinely enthusiastic and take great joy in transmitting and sharing their experiences and knowledge.
But I do get a laugh from people who buy into every marketing ploy and believe everything they hear, but who can't trust their own taste buds and experience. Blind tasting is a wonderful exercise in humility and finding out how easily influenced we are by expectations, visual clues, suggestion, etc. Everyone should try it at least once.
When it comes to coffee, though, freshness pretty much trumps everything else- I despair when people buy $50/kilo beans from Ethiopia or Jamaica that were roasted months ago and are sold loose in bulk. Better off with any decent blend that has been vacuum packed or is sold loose and has been very recently roasted.
I think you have to look at the climate change in a wider perspective. The coffee plantations in 70 years possibly will no longer be in Africa but in the Po region in Lombardia and in the southern Ticino. Cornwall and Devon will become major wine producers. And oranges will be harvested in the outskirts of Paris. And in Switzerland, there will be vineyards along the Vierwaldstättersee and in the Emmental. The Canton of Appenzell will join the wine-producers. Chicco d'Oro coffee will be made of coffee varieties grown in the Magadino-Plains and around Mendrisio !
which means that the sales inside Switzerland are taxed in Volketswil with the Canton of Zürich the main beneficia ry, but the trad ing-profits in the rest of Europe in Lausanne with the Canton of Vaud as the main beneficiary.
In regard to Costa, it is interesting to see that they are active in the U.K. and Ireland, in China and India, in the Mashreek (Asian part of the Arab World) and in Egypt, in Russia and Eastern Europe, but according to their WEBsite not yet in Western Continental Europe
http://www.costacoffee.com/
but once they enter the area the y may reloca te their "technical" HQ to Vaduz or Luxemburg or Mon aco
"Pilot project" means that they first have to test the idea. St. Gallen-Geneva however of course is what I regard as THE mainline of SBB as it goes through
and so looks like being a good testing ground. As far as I read it in the papers, the idea of Starbucks is to have dozens of bistros on board of SBB trains
10 years ago, working at a specialty counter for wine, cheese, meats, coffee, and chocolate I decided to never pay more than $15 for a bottle of wine again (this was in the USA). I've been disappointed a few times, but generally happy, and never regretted that decision. I'm pursuing the same here in CH and, so far, the wine has only improved while staying the same low price!
Cool study at Caltech on price and perception:
"Antonio Rangel, an associate professor of economics at Caltech, and his colleagues found that changes in the stated price of a sampled wine influenced not only how good volunteers thought it tasted, but the activity of a brain region that is involved in our experience of pleasure. In other words, "prices, by themselves, affect activity in an area of the brain that is thought to encode the experienced pleasantness of an experience," Rangel says."
That's how a Champagne house spokeswoman said that they could justify the high prices for their champagne even though some of the supermarket branded champagnes beat them in blind-tasting tests.
K-Tipps magazine usually has a wine review each month and some of the Lidl ones come out really well.