Note sull'episodio
Starbucks did not invent its most famous blended drink. The Frappuccino came from the Coffee Connection, George Howell's chain in eastern Massachusetts, and the name was coined by marketing director Andrew Frank. It fused cappuccino with frappe, the New England word for a thick ice cream milkshake, giving adults permission to order dessert as coffee. Starbucks bought the Coffee Connection in 1994, along with the rights to the name and product, and rolled out a reworked version in 1995.
Scaling it meant changing the physics. Fresh espresso melted ice and varied store to store, so the recipe switched to an instant coffee base and xanthan gum, whose tangled molecular chains keep ice, water, and milk fat from separating. The category passed $2 billion in annual sales by 2012. Starbucks and PepsiCo formed the North American Coffee Partnership in 1994 and put bottled Frappuccino in stores in 1996, while the cafe menu added coffee free crème drinks, plant milks, and viral stunts like the color changing Unicorn Frappuccino of April 2017. The sugar numbers are stark next to the American Heart Association's daily limits of 36 grams for men and 32 for women.
- Bottled Frappuccino arrived in 9.5 ounce glass bottles and now comes in 19 flavors.
- Soy milk rolled out across the US and Canada in 2010, followed by coconut, almond, and oat milk.
- Juice blends ran from 2006 to 2008, and the lower sugar Frappuccino Light was dropped in 2013.
- The Unicorn Frappuccino sold out within hours at many stores and carried 16 grams of fat.
- A grande sugar cookie almond milk Frappuccino has 58 grams of sugar, a matcha crème 61, and a pumpkin spice 65.