Why has the drive thru system discouraged Starbucks baristas from grabbing their black felt tip pen and scribbling and misspelling your name on your cup for that more personal touch? (why stop the habit of a Starbucks lifetime?)  Allowing you to place a pic on social media and provide some free advertising for this coffee giant.

After all writing names on their cups we have been told is a fun tradition born out of the relationship and interaction between Starbuck employees and its customers.  Their baristas aim to do their best when it comes to spelling the names of their customers, though at times it can be tricky especially when you are trying to create a piece of coffee magic, can’t spell or don’t have courtesy to ask if you don’t know!

So, the £4.39 was purely for the pleasure of an iced white mocha with a shot of hazelnut! No personalised experience just simply and robotically to be handed this see through cup minus a straw followed quickly by the card machine!

Feeling depresso – Starbucks you Mocha me crazy with your crazy coffee names and inventions and exorbitant prices my mood is anything but grounded and yet for me it is definetly a case of dejabrew!

I have been here before – in fact been there before – spent ages pondering what did I want? The list is impressive but not designed for those unprepared – especially in a drive thru situ!

But I am a coffee creature of habit – the predictable iced white mocha woman.  Which I might just go crazy and partake in a shot of something even sweeter to inject into it – leaving me with such a sugar rush on these ocassions, I could easily leave the car and run home!

Like most fast fixes the thought is normally better than the experience itself coming then to terms with the added aftershock I have just parted with enough cash that I could have easily opted to purchase a jar of coffee or carton of coffee bags, perhaps a box of coffee sachets or a line of coffee pods. 

And so, I swear never again will I be faced with the decision of having to decide whether I would stray away from an iced white mocha and have a cheeky Almond milk Honey Flat White? A Tall, non – fat latte with caramel drizzle? A grande, iced, sugar free (tee hee), vanilla latte with soya milk? An iced skinny hazelnut macchiato with an extra shot of whatever syrup was in season, heavy on the ice (you dont usually need to ask as this comes anyway), no whipped cream? A Caramel Macchiato with skimmed milk and quad shot, extra hot with extra whipped cream or should I go for a grande chai tea latte, 3 pumps, skimmed milk, no foam, extra hot?

More decisions in one coffee encounter than I had made all year round!  The choices!  Millk alone, you can have oat, almond, soya, coconut or Original Nut blend  in your cappuccino's, lattes, frappuccino's, frappa (tasty alternatives on hot days), cafe mochas, caramel macchiato's,  or forget the dairy and go for a plain old Expresso or Americano!

And in April 2021, for a limited time the coffee chain introduced the Bubbletastic Frappuccino – a bright blue, bubblegum drink topped with whipped cream and pink popping candy an all natural blue-green algae which has plenty of great health benefits – who wouldn’t be tempted to pop that on their list of things to drink and test your calorie counter with?

My decision was made - £4.39 for a coffee!  No more would I have to contemplate the sizes of cups that seem to bear little resemblance to the actual sizes they represent.

£4.39 for a cup of coffee?  It is hard to imagine when there is such a vast coffee offering on the shelves of a supermarket that we still opt to get into our cars and order a coffee to go especially when it is questionable that the experience doesn’t outweigh the cost.

We have ground, we have bags, we have pods, we have capsules, we have sachets, we have tins, we have jars.  We have the ability to make hot ones, cold ones, iced ones, and frothy ones. 

And yet I always return there like clockwork the iced white mocha woman who appears to have a memory disorder and impaired reasoning seeking out the sweetness rush that only this latte lady provider provides.

Take Life one cup at a time!