According to news weblog Slate, Starbucks can serve you a better, stronger cappuccino that costs less money; the baristas all know about it, but it's not on any menu. We're talking about the Starbucks short cappuccino, and if you're going to visit the Seattle-based coffee megacorporation you may want to give it a try.


In Europe and in barista competitions a cappuccino is defined as a 4-6 oz beverage but the smallest cappuccino on the menu at Starbucks is the 12 oz "Tall". The 8oz "short" cappuccino from Starbucks is 8 oz but has the same amount of espresso as the tall, meaning that your coffee to milk ratio is much higher. The reason why smaller cappuccinos are regarded as superior is that most coffee experts maintain that it is impossible to properly froth the microfoam in larger quantities. Slate states that

a 20-ounce cappuccino is any oxymoron...I can confirm that [the short cappuccino] is a better drink than the buckets of warm milk—topped with a veneer of froth—that the coffee chain advertises on its menus.


Why is the short cappuccino not on the menu? Starbucks, like most retail coffeeshops, must maintain a fine line with pricing; if the price is too high you drive customers away, but if you price it too low the margins don't allow sufficient profit. Keeping the short off the menus raises the bar for the minimum drink size to tall which keeps the jump from the smallest beverage to the largest only around a dollar in price difference.

So if you just want more coffee in your cappuccino or prefer to spend as little as possible at Starbucks there are a few reasons to give the short cappuccino a try. Photo by Marco Arment

Starbucks Economics: Solving the mystery of the elusive "short" cappuccino | Slate