Busting up a Starbucks

Well, this isn’t really about “Busting up a Starbucks,” but the Mike Doughty song of the same name seems somewhat apt for this post.

I came across this story about Starbucks’ “super-secret” cappuccino and found it quite interesting. Apparently, there is an unadvertised “short cappuccino” that most Starbucks stores will sell you without hassle…albeit quietly. An excerpt from the Slate.com article…

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.

I’m not a real cappuccino person, but I think I’m going to try this the next time I visit a Starbucks.