Docket #16-005: Predatory Pokémen

Hey Geoff. I’m just gonn say it: we don’t care why episodes are late. We are just grateful as they get released but have no built in expectation as to schedule. 🙂

Anyways, I write to be a pedant of sorts. Not to defend this woman, but I used to work at Starbucks and here’s how it works.

So if you compare hot drink cups to iced drink cups, you’ll notice they aren’t actually the same size. While a tall hot cup is indeed 12 fluid ounces, an iced tall cup is actually 16 fluid ounces. Likewise grands hot cups are 16, iced grande cups are 20. And ventin hot are 20, iced venti are actually 28. This is to account for the ice.

However, I always thought this was weird, because next to the ice tray we always had three different scoops. One for tall drinks, one for grande, one for venti, of increasing size. However the cup size differences are 4 fluid ounces for tall+grande, 8 for venti.

(As an aside, this also means that for espresso drinks, the size you order can dramatically change the drink you receive. This is because espresso shots are integers, typically for tall, grande, venti its 1, 2, 2 or 1, 2, 3. However since the volume is only increasing by 25-33% each time, the ratio of espresso to milk changes dramatically. A good rule of thumb tho is that tall = the weakest, grande = the strongest, venti = middle, at least most of the time.)

I never measured those ice scoops, or more accurately one would need to measure the displacement volume of the ice typically contained in a scoop, but if say the tall scoop brings 4 fluid ounces worth of ice over, then the grande and venti scoops definetly bring more. However the iced venti cups are a full 8 fluid ounces larger for ice, compared to the extra 4 for tall and grande. These new treinta size is new, and since I don’t work there anymore, I can’t give any insight on it.

Either way tho I agree, the lawsuit is dumb. However as a good pedantic internet geek I had to correct you that when Starbucks advertises the fluid ounces of the drink, they are not referring to ghe volume of the cups. It’s actually a closer approximation to the size of the drink than it is of the cup–however I have a feeling the stated amount in grande drinks is probably low, venti probably high.

Last thing, the reason she is definetly wrong tho, is that the ice is always the last thing added to every drink. Every drink is made according to recipe either in countable integer amounts, or based on the strategically placed lines on the transparent cups. Once the recipe is made, it’s made. The different size scoops for ice is just to make things easier on the barista, because the final step is always add ice till full. Each scoop is just there because it happens to give the right amount of ice 99% of the time.

So even if the company has secretly been swapping out those scoops for near identical but slightly larger ones, that would just result in baristas being inconvenienced by not being able to close the lid on slightly overfilled cups with ice sticking out the top. The recipe is the recipe and it comes before the ice, always.