First, welcome my mom (and I'm sure my dad, too) to the blog. I have never told anyone at home that I have this, but a few internet savvy people have found it anyway. I guess it's time to come clean to the folks back in VA and admit I'm a blogger:
Hi, my name is Isabel and I have a blog.
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I'm in Starbucks right now. I'm in A Starbucks at least 4 times a week. I sit and use the free internet and drink an OK coffee of the day. I have almost always ordered the coffee of the day because it's quick and it's cheap. They fill it up while I'm paying and I get out of Starbucks within minutes.
This is not the case in Chile. Because I ask for a coffee with "one finger of milk" (this is our system so that I don't get a cortado, or half coffee/half milk because my "poquito" is not the same as other peoples' "poquito"), the coffee must go down the line to the espresso bar. Always. Without fail. Inevitably, I wait along with everyone else to get my coffee with milk. This is because there is no milk on the counter with the sugar and the napkins. Once, I went to a Santiago Starbucks and there was milk on the counter, but I haven't seen it since then. I have wondered why they don't put the milk out here and have come up with two possibilities:
1. The milk isn't hot if it's out on the counter. Many Chileans I know love hot milk. They drink it at breakfast and they buy a cortado mostly for the heated milk. When your coffee goes through the espresso line, you get warm to hot milk and sometimes even foam (I love those days) in your coffee. It sorta makes sense that the milk isn't out on the counter if people are going to be asking the employees to heat it up anyway.
2. People will use the free milk too liberally. Again because many Chileans love their milk, maybe Starbucks is worried some will help themselves to glassfulls of it once they've finished their coffee. I'm pretty positive this is at least part of the reason, but you never know. It's just funny to think about because it would never occur to me to refill my cup with milk, but it has always occurred to me to refill my soda at Taco Bell even if you're not supposed to.
3 comments:
ha! I learn something new everyday! I haven't made it into a Starbucks here yet but I'm sure that when I do I would have been looking around for the milk wondering what the heck was going on. Thanks for the tip since it sounds like we like our coffee the same. :)
glad I could help, Heather!
So I thought of this post yesterday when I went to Starbucks and asked for a "cafe americano alto con leche descremada frio". What I wanted was an iced coffee with skim milk. What I got was a hot coffee with cold milk. I think I should have said was "cafe americano alto frio con leche descremada". Oh the trials and tribulations of ordering coffee at starbucks. My life is hard.
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