The Backlash Against Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte Explained

August 22 wasn’t a particularly cold or fall day in much of North America. Yet it was the day Starbucks unveiled its new product this year, its earliest release date ever, as the company grapples with slowing sales. Pumpkin Spice Latte To its customers.

If you mistake that tone for disdain, you’d be forgiven. Since its introduction in 2003, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has become a straw man in discussions about capitalism, seasonal sprawl, and the meaning of “basic,” leading to widespread dislike for this otherwise innocuous beverage.

For example, in 2014, at the height of the pumpkin spice craze, This site describes the PSL Described as “a greasy, acrid, saccharine brown liquid that’s equal parts dairy and diabetes, served in paper cups and drunk by the liter” – although the Pumpkin Spice Latte is apparently a very tasty drink, Wear a vest And make a foolish comment about how crisp the air is today. Yes, it has 380 calories; yes, it will turn your coffee an unappetizing orange; and no, you shouldn’t “drink it by the litre”.

But the disdain for PSL and other seasonal pumpkin spice flavors is often not about the flavor itself. After all, there are plenty of other flavors that deserve far more ire. (There is one A shop in Scotland Mayonnaise Ice Creampeople! ) too often, it’s associated with sexism, class anxiety, and our collective suspicion of savvy marketing. After all, the PSL does something right: It’s Starbucks’ most popular seasonal drink, with approximately Global sales reached 424 millionIn 2019, the chain took it a step further by launching its Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew Coffee, finally admitting to the world that late August is still iced coffee season.

Pumpkin spice lattes are almost non-existent. Starbucks veteran Tim Cohen told Quartz“Many of us felt that the beverage’s primary feature was flavors other than coffee, and therefore failed to fully showcase Starbucks coffee.”

Fortunately, Starbucks’ Tim Kerns was eventually overthrown, as the PSL became its best-selling drink within a decade of its launch in 2003, with more than 200 million cups sold. In 2015, Forbes estimated that PSL brings in about $100 million in revenue One season.

2015 was also the year Starbucks changed its ten-year recipe; Includes real pumpkins For the first time, instead of just caramel coloring and pumpkin pie spices (like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves), it tastes pretty much the same in every way, except, According to its inventor, it is a “cleaning agent”.

By then, Starbucks Pumpkin Pie wasn’t just a cash cow, it was a cultural phenomenon, thanks in part to its marketing strategy—there was nothing seasonal about the spices in pumpkin pie, but Starbucks convinced us that the drink was only meant to be consumed in the fall, thereby increasing demand.

But there’s another reason why PSL has been so popular over the past decade. Suzy Badaracco told Vox in 2014“Pumpkin became part of a comfort food trend during the 2008 recession” because of its association with Thanksgiving and the holiday season. More likely to crave foods that bring back happy memories.

Of course, the reason we started talking about PSLs is because of their popularity on social media. It’s not because they’re inherently photogenic—a Starbucks cup is a Starbucks cup no matter what’s in it, and PSLs don’t come in specially designed cups like holiday drinks.

That’s because when you add PSL to a photo—say, your new fall boots standing on crisp leaves, or a selfie with a festive dark lipstick—it adds to the fall aesthetic. It’s no coincidence that Instagram—the epicenter of fall cuteness—exploded in the early 2010s, right around the time it became fashionable to claim you hated pumpkin spice.

But that may not be the whole story.

The fact that the pumpkin spice latte — which, for many, conjures the scent and imagery of Thanksgiving — is introduced year after year in increasingly hot weather is often touted as an ominous harbinger of the sinister forces of seasonal creep. “This is agricultural revisionism!” Some argue that pumpkins don’t actually mature until the fall.

A 2014 John Oliver web video made the same point, noting that “that bottle of pumpkin-flavored Science candy sitting behind the counter at Starbucks will never get old, just like Ryan Seacrest”:

Perhaps in response to such criticism, in 2019 Starbucks introduced its second pumpkin spice drink since the launch of the PSL, but this time it was served cold. The Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew is a vanilla cold brew with pumpkin cold foam and topped with pumpkin spice. CNBC reported “Less sweet than a pumpkin spice latte and stronger coffee flavor.”

The success of PSL has also largely led to the creation of other pumpkin spice flavored products, including Cream cheese, dog food, Kahlua coffee liquor, and a particularly wacky seasonal concoction called PeepsThere are also Air Freshener, DeodorantEven Four Loko (well, That ended up being a joke.), resulting in concerns that the food trend had “gone too far.” (In fact, as early as 2010, spice brand McCormick predicted that pumpkin spice would become a popular flavor for the holiday season, which in turn may have fueled the craze.)

When a food trend becomes as popular as pumpkin spice — have you ever been Trader Joe’s October—It forces us to think about how the free market essentially creates this phenomenon. If a product like the Pumpkin Spice Latte is a hit, it’s natural under capitalism for other companies to try to replicate that success. But it’s disturbing when we see it happen on such an exaggerated scale.

Well, maybe, but maybe the pumpkin spice backlash is actually because we’re rejecting trends that are coded as feminine. As Jaya Saxena wrote in a Taste magazine article last fall titled “Women don’t ruin food” “When men enjoy something, they enhance it. But when women enjoy something, they destroy it.”

She goes on to discuss “feminine” favorites like acai bowls, rosé, and pumpkin spice, and “masculine” favorites like barbecue, spicy Cheetos, and India Pale Ale:

When these foods become popular, we accuse women of being fooled by marketing or trying to follow trends, we assume they like what other women like and therefore don’t have their own opinions. On top of that, women are asked to consciously or unconsciously consider the psychological symbolism attached to seemingly innocuous foods.

Furthermore, “masculine” foods are almost never ““Basic,” a vague term used to describe someone with ordinary, predictable tastes, is often used to describe women.

In the most typical (and now probably outdated) terms, “basic bitches” wear North Face, leggings, and Uggs, and I really like the label PSLmarking her as a woman with “a girlish interest in the changing of the seasons and an innocent preference for sweets”. Cut in 2014.

This also often has classist overtones. In a BuzzFeed article about “basic” and class anxiety, Anne Helen Peterson writes:

Distinctive tastes—and the ability to avoid basic tastes—are a privilege. A privilege of location (usually urban), education (exposure to other cultures and regions), and parents (who introduce and promote other tastes). To summarize the seminal work of theorist Pierre Bourdieu: we do not choose our tastes; the micro details of our class determine our tastes. Consuming and performing online in basic ways, therefore, reflects a highly Americanized capitalist upbringing. Basic girls love what they do because Virtually every segment of the American business media Tell them they should do this.

Essentially, hating pumpkin spice lattes is how we differentiate ourselves from people who drink the beverage, and in the process, we also mark ourselves as decidedly un-ordinary.

Of course, the word “basic” does not mean the same thing as the way black people have used it for decades, as Kara Brown explains in Jezebelwhich basically translates to “I think the stuff you like is lame, and I don’t like you that much.”

“Rihanna can be the official face of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte and no one would call her mediocre,” she wrote. “You know why? Because Rihanna does what she wants to do, what she thinks is cool, and doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.”

However, even if Rihanna suddenly became the official face of the PSL, frankly, it’s possible that no one would care that much anymore. We seem to have reached peak searches for “pumpkin spice hot drink” in 2014, and peak searches for “pumpkin spice latte” in 2015.

Maybe it’s because we’re all tired of seasonal drinks. Starbucks keeps introducing all kinds of gimmicky drinks, from unicorn frappuccinos to so-called “secret menu” drinks.

Nor have we seen the same outrage directed at the drink that could replace pumpkin spice as the de facto flavor of fall. In 2017, both Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts introduced maple pecan lattes. Based on restaurant menu data From that year, “menu mentions of maple as a flavor for nonalcoholic beverages increased 86 percent over the previous year. … Mentions of pumpkin, on the other hand, dropped 20 percent.” Yet, no one is complaining about how silly maple syrup is.

Today, tweets about PSL are more along the lines of: “Fuck you, let me enjoy my shitty drink in peace because everything sucks.”

People also expressed a “real” boredom with pumpkin spice, as if someone real Want to talk about it.

There were even some sarcastic tweets mocking feminists’ automated response to the anti-pumpkin spice brigade:

Anyway, all this to say is that now that pumpkin spice has finally returned, the symbol of autumn’s blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves is just that: not basic, not everything that’s wrong with capitalism, and not gross. Because it isn’t! It’s delicious.

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Updated: August 22, 2024, 10:20 AM ET: This story was originally published in 2018 and has been updated several times, most recently with the 2024 PSL return date.