A response to those still complaining about Starbucks.

A buddy of mine from back home posted a note that contained the following:

"I am so happy about the movie "Role Models!" For years I have DETESTED the pretentious use of “grande” and “venti” by Starbucks and Paul Russ used the EXACT SAME LANGUAGE I have used to blast those bistro-masters (morons) who insist we use their boutique slang. So in the movie, Paul Rudd goes to town on some dipshit about it. Rent the movie. I AM EXONERATED BY HOLLYWOOD! (“Tall means large and grande is Spanish for large. Venti is Italian for 20 and is the only word that doesn’t mean large. Congratulations, you’re stupid in 3 languages.” --- love it!!!)."

Starbucks is neither a bistro nor a boutique. They have very specific, logical reasons for their cup size names.

As an ex-barista at Starbucks (a job I really enjoyed) one might suspect I would have loyalties to and bias for the company. As a critical thinker and devoted skeptic, however, I will gladly examine and acknowledge any evidence and/or logical arguments objectively. So while my understanding of the subject is a result of my working there, the rebuttal is due to my particular distaste for people distorting and/or misunderstanding the facts and making logically and culturally stupid comments about the easy-to-target Corporation for cheap laughs.

Starbucks' hot beverages come in four sizes: short, tall, grande, and venti.

When the company first started, they only had two - short and tall. The company grew, as did the demand for larger sizes, so they added 'grande' as their largest size, to distinguish it from the already well-established 'tall'. (By the time the company became large enough to care about these demands, they had such a regular, established customer base that they did not want to redo their entire system of cup sizing.)

Grande, by the way, is also Italian. Perhaps your buddy Paul didn't get the memo that Italian and Spanish are sister languages and share many of the same words/spellings.

Anyway, so then Starbucks exploded as a company and it became cool to run around with a cup of coffee in your hand all the time. So of course people wanted more coffee in one cup, and Starbucks had to respond with yet another, larger size. With no reasonable or efficient way to redo the size system, they couldn't just tack on another "large," so they created another distinctly-named size, venti (which is the number of ounces contained in that size.)

They have four very distinct words for their sizes for a specific reason. Among the most important of Starbucks' priorities is efficiency. They train the bejesus out of their baristas to make them fast and consistent , and a large part of that is cup calling. They have very specific words for all of the specifications of any given drink. If the person at the register is calling "large" "extra large" "small" to the barista, the barista would either make the wrong size often or would be constantly checking with the (already busy) register person, which slows things down significantly and gets the drinks out of order. "Tall," "short," "grande," and "venti" are completely different sounding words, so there is very rarely a misheard size.

By the way, we still call it "espresso" here in America; people seem to have no problem with that Italian word describing coffee. What's your issue with using other words from the culture of its origin?

And finally, I'd like to say that I don't think Starbucks is pretentious. There is very little pretense involved; they serve quality coffee, train their baristas well to execute and fully understand the drinks they sell, follow through on their volunteer/charity commitments, make/sell high quality coffee-related merchandise, and incorporate a huge variety of music that is generally culturally valuable into their atmosphere/merchandise.

Launching into a rant about why Starbucks is pretentious and then saying blaringly ignorant things like "grande means large in Spanish" to make your argument sound informed or clever - THAT is pretentious. Because it's empty; it's not clever and he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Though I do think Starbucks is one of the exceptions to the rule of corporations cutting corners, inflating their image with stupid lingo/advertising campaigns, and training their employees minimally, people should know it's an exception because they did their research, not just because it's fun to join the popular trend of bashing large corporations.

P.S. About the whole "I don't want to pay $5 for a cup of coffee" thing:

There is an ongoing (though quiet) feud between Dunkin' Donuts coffee drinkers and Starbucks customers. On the side of the Dunkin' Donuts "argument" is the claim that DD is less expensive than Starbucks (and thus, some say, less pretentious - "why pay $5 for a cup of coffee?"). I looked it all up, and the verdict is:

They are the same. At $2 for a Venti, Starbucks' brew is a few cents less than DD's brew, but Starbucks' specialty espresso drinks are a few cents more than DD's. So it evens out.

No one pays $5 for just a cup of coffee. That $5 is for a 20-oz espresso drink with soy milk, extra shots, extra syrups, and a barista who has spent weeks training to get it exactly right every time.