There Is No Better Size Starbucks Coffee on the Menu
There is no such thing as “small” on the Starbucks menu. Sizes, as anyone who has listened to a bad stand-up comedy show knows, is tall, grand, and vented. Starbucks isn’t stupid. They offer small; there is so little demand for it that it is not included on the menu. And they don’t call it small. (Maybe Starbucks is a little dumb.)
Starbucks Height – 12 ounces; grande – 16; Venti – 20. (Trenta – my lord – 31 oz.) You don’t have to order any of this. You should order “short”.
It’s not a secret; The baristas know what it is, they will grab the smaller cup and pour it. Short is a full member of the Starbucks grocery offering. He’s just not on the menu.
A Starbucks short is an 8oz, like a pre-filled ceramic coffee mug, or a takeout cup in a trendier café. (The classic blue and white paper cup WE HAPPY SERVE YOU holds 10 ounces, somewhere between short and high – medium if you will.)
The short is especially good for cappuccino. As Slate noted many years ago, real cappuccino has a thick froth from the frothed milk . Above 8 ounces, the foam breaks down and the milk dilutes the coffee. (The World Barista Championship states that cappuccino should be only 5 to 6 ounces.) And at Starbucks, a short cappuccino contains just as much espresso as a tall cappuccino. This is the same drink, but better, but for less money.
Even drip coffee is 8 ounces better. As Tom Skokka of Gawker said five years ago, the right size of coffee is small :
When you drink coffee that is larger than a small portion of coffee, the coffee cools down before you can finish it. You start with a steaming, invigorating sip, and gradually end up sucking up cold, odorless waste. Everyone knows this. Even people who despise small coffee admit that their big drinks end in misfortune.
This is why (if you have time for a few coffees) you should order a short one, even if you drank a lot of coffee. Your coffee will always be hot. Plus, you can arrange it as you see fit and maybe even cut back and restore your tolerance.
Why is Starbucks hiding small? Slate believes this is necessary to get people to pay more. But before, there were little things on the net! The sizes were short, tall and large. But American customers continued to clamor for the larger sizes, and Starbucks added vents (Italian for twenty) and knocked out the short ones from the menu.
We will not argue again in favor of a little coffee. You are free to make your own choices. We just want you to make an informed choice, not let the coffee chain menu make it for you. When you’re at Starbucks, try the short one. And do it Pike Place.