The Secret Behind The Lines On Starbucks Cups
File this under the list of things you noticed once and then never thought about again: Ever wonder what the three black lines on the side of your to-go Starbucks cup are for? As it turns out, the innovative cup design makes life easier for busy baristas, marking important measurements for ingredients at the 8-ounce, 12-ounce, and 16-ounce levels.
These lines are only present on the plastic iced drink cups, not the paper ones for hot drinks (sorry, baristas; you're on your own for those). Depending on the drink, a barista might fill up coffee to the second line, milk or creamer to the third, and then fill the remainder with ice or simply put in the requested number of espresso shots and proceed from there with milk to the third line. Not that those are the only options. Other coffee shop brands' baristas may weigh ingredients, which is accurate but takes time. Using separate volumetric measuring devices may be a bit faster to some baristas but requires extra cleanup. Some baristas may even just eyeball it. The guesstimating approach certainly works, especially once a barista is practiced enough to have muscle memory, but Starbucks' focus on efficiency makes the line measurements important to their goal of consistency.
The new cups' lines are more than meets the eye
In years past, the cups simply had black fill lines, but with a redesign in early 2024, the cups now feature both black and white fill lines, which better allow for contrast against both light and dark drinks, making the baristas' jobs that much easier and your service that much faster. Other new design innovations include making the lids the same for all three drink sizes and adding embossed letters and dots to make it easier for those with low visibility to tell by touch what size a cup is. In the same way as the lines, Starbucks executives are hoping these changes, however minor, will help improve efficiency and decrease barista stress during rush hour.
This is just one of several changes the coffee brand has made recently in an effort to recapture customers, from providing nondairy milks at no additional charge to introducing an authentic Spanish Basque cortado coffee to their winter menu. Will these changes stick around? Only time will tell — but so far, the measurement lines seem to have stood the test of time. And one day, they also might write your name on one of the lines — yes, Starbucks is considering writing names on cups again after a hiatus since the pandemic. And what better place than that little black line?