Starbucks Mysteries

I’m rarely in a Starbucks so I don’t know how well this works, but it might be worth a shot if you’re stuck in an airport or just need an emergency shot of caffeine somewhere…

Here’s a little secret that Starbucks doesn’t want you to know: They will serve you a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it. Ask for it in any Starbucks and the barista will comply without batting an eye. The puzzle is to work out why.

The drink in question is the elusive “short cappuccino”—at 8 ounces, a third smaller than the smallest size on the official menu, the “tall,” and dwarfed by what Starbucks calls the “customer-preferred” size, the “Venti,” which weighs in at 20 ounces and more than 200 calories before you add the sugar.

The short cappuccino has the same amount of espresso as the 12-ounce tall, meaning a bolder coffee taste, and also a better one. The World Barista Championship rules, for example, define a traditional cappuccino as a “five- to six-ounce beverage.” This is also the size of cappuccino served by many continental cafés. Within reason, the shorter the cappuccino, the better.

The problem with large cappuccinos is that it’s impossible to make the fine-bubbled milk froth (“microfoam,” in the lingo) in large quantities, no matter how skilled the barista. A 20-ounce cappuccino is an oxymoron. Having sampled the short cappuccino in a number of Starbucks across the world, I can confirm that it is a better drink than the buckets of warm milk—topped with a veneer of froth—that the coffee chain advertises on its menus.

This secret cappuccino is cheaper, too—at my local Starbucks, $2.35 instead of $2.65. But why does this cheaper, better drink—along with its sisters, the short latte and the short coffee—languish unadvertised? The official line from Starbucks is that there is no room on the menu board, although this doesn’t explain why the short cappuccino is also unmentioned on the comprehensive Starbucks Web site, nor why the baristas will serve you in a whisper rather than the usual practice of singing your order to the heavens.

This also give me a chance to reprint something I’ve been saving from the old Los Angeles Cacophony Society email list.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who has the peculiar misfortune of working for Starbucks about an article I saw in the LA Times about the various ways customers customize their latte. Apparently there is a complex code that the employees follow to keep track of custom orders. He casually mentioned that he had come up with a drink that was completely within Starbucks guidelines and drinkable, but which took no less than fifteen minutes to make, and which necessitated the trashing of almost a quart of milk just to make the one drink.

My ears instantly perked up… I asked if anyone had ever ordered it, and he explained that no one had, but if they did, the manager would assign a standby person to make it so the rest of the store wouldn’t be held up. My ears perked up again… “What would happen if one person at each register ordered one? …and if the people following them in line said ‘Hey! That looks good. I’ll have one too!’ …and what if this was in the middle of morning rush hour?”

“Total chaos” was the answer. He claims that with this drink order, nine people could incapacitate a Starbucks for nearly an hour. The drinks would be more than the average latte, but would cost much less than the labor and materials it took to make them.

And the Order Of Doom (in “Starbucks Speak”) is called:

Quarter-caf, Quad Three-Decaf-Luongo One-Ristretto Grande-in-double-Venti wax-paper, Two-pump-hazelnut, One-pump-sugar-free-vanilla, half-pump-Irish Creme, Quarter-Percent, Quarter-Soy, Half-Heavy-Whipping-Cream Breve, Half-pack-Sweet-and-Low, Quarter-pack-Equal, Two-and-a-third-Honey, One-Raw-Sugar, Light-Extra-Foam, Thick-Whole-Foam, No-Whip, Six-ice-cube, 186-degree, Caramel Sauce-top-and-bottom, three-pump-Ebony, Mocha Valencia Macchiato

Translated into English…

Three quarters of the total espresso is decaf, four shots total: 3 of which are manually pulled decaf luongo and one manually pulled ristretto. 16 oz total drink size in a double cupped 20 ounce cup covered with wax paper before lidding to prevent spilling. Three and a half pumps of flavored syrups added before milk or espresso. One quarter of the total milk is 2% lowfat, one quarter non-dairy soy and half heavy whipping cream. Various sweeteners added. Thick, whole milk foam (not whipped cream) six ice cubes, 186 degree milk (which scalds the milk), Caramel sauce on the bottom and floated on the top. Three pumps of Ebony Mocha with orange and chocolate flavor and shredded orange peel on top. (Valencia) Espresso shots poured into cup after everything else
(Macchiado).

This is in order… If you give them the recipe out of order, they will have to sort the requests into the proper order for the barista, requiring them to write it all down and figure it out. That would be good for another four or five minutes easy.

I have no idea if that’s a valid Starbucks order, but it hasn’t propagated enough to warrant a Snopes entry so who knows. Anyone want to try?