Christmas at Starbucks - Up the Red Cups! (Starbucks)

Member Name: QueenSmythe

Product:	Starbucks
Date:	05/11/09 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sugary sweet for the festive season

Disadvantages: You'll miss it in January

With less than 2 months until Christmas the red cups have landed at Starbucks. For me, nothing heralds retail's festive season quite like it. Whilst some stores may have had their Christmas trees up since summer Starbucks hold out on their festive beverage barrage until November, which is an almost acceptable period of time. To explain: Starbucks' paper take-out cups are normally white but once a year, to coincide with their Christmas 'menu' they use red ones. I am very susceptible to the power of packaging, & walking into my local branch this morning did make me feel rather Christmassy.

Starbucks have 4 seasonal drinks this year:

Gingerbread Latte
Toffee Nut Latte
Dark Cherry mocha
Eggnog Latte

Gingerbread, Toffee & Dark Cherry seem to be the official Christmas drinks this year, with their photos featured on the menu boards. However, Eggnog Latte, absent last year & very much missed, has been snuck onto the standard drinks list. Prices in the chain do vary from area to area but the price of all 4 drinks is identical, & rather expensive in comparison to the usual range.

The branch I use has the following prices:

Tall - £2.85
Grande - £3.20
Venti - £3.45

The Gingerbread Latte is far & away my favourite. It's very sweet but with an almost bitter, spicy taste at the very end. I'm not sure if it really tastes like genuine gingerbread as it's rather synthetic but it's certainly moreish.

The Toffee Nut Latte (I've not had one this year but I imagine it's the same) is, again, very sweet, obvisouly very nutty, & much improved if you ignore the calorie count & accept the cream topping. The taste does hang around for quite a while but at least it's good.

I'm not a huge fan of the Dark Cherry mocha. Whilst the above two drinks are certainly sweet, the Cherry flavour is just a bit too much. It's like liquidized black forest gateau.

Finally the Eggnog Latte. I think they've done well with achieving that creamy eggnog taste. However, like the gingerbread, there is a certain synthetic taste to it. It's much sweeter than a straight up Eggnog!

It's not just about the drinks though. They've got a Turkey Panini & a Brie & Cranberry. The biggest advantage of the brie is that it's a Panini that contains cheese but not mozarella, thereby not leaving an embarassing dairy string from sandwich to mouth as you take a bite. Beware the generic panini taste though: I don't know what goes into them but they manage to taste very similar whether they contain steak or tuna!

There's also cakes. This year it's cranberry & orange muffins (skinny & fat), Christmas Pudding Cupcake, Black Forest Cupcake & All Butter mince Pies. The Christmas gingerbread look good, with colourful icing in traditional colours, but when I've had them in the past they've been too hard & not worth the expense. I stick to the cakes!

One last thing: it's not just about the vittals on offer, there's the ambience too. Obviously there's something bland about the standardization of the chain but that doesn't necessarily affect your individual experience in your individual store. They've got good point of sale this year; the design is red on white & very intricate. Almost Tim Burtonesque. The artwork on one of the posters was embellished with a red felt like substance. They've got the obligatory Christmas mugs & flasks too, as well as some nice felt toys. There was no Christmas music playing in there today but I'm sure the crooners are only a matter of weeks away.

I'm planning to enjoy the festive beverages while they're here!

Summary: Sugar & spice & all things nice.