Coffee size conundrum: when tall doesn’t mean large

Coffee conundrum: which one is 'tall'

‘A man in front of me in Starbucks ordered a tall, black, Americano – I thought: “is he ordering a President”?’ It’s a groan-worthy joke, but one which rings with truth at the absurd naming conventions coffee shops use.

Let’s get one thing straight: I like my coffee. I even have my own Gaggia machine at home and spend endless hours trying to perfect microfoam (I still haven’t).

I am also addicted not only to the caffeine, but also the shops that sell it. Maybe it’s the smell? The Matt Nathanson soundtrack they all seem to use? The lighting? I don’t really know, but I enjoy the experience of going in and watching a barista make my coffee (while also making notes on how you get that all-important microfoam).

There is, however, something that always perplexes me: the ludicrous descriptions of the drinks.

What size?

Now many people prefer to go in the same chain for their coffee day in, day out. If that’s the case, then you probably never encounter this problem. Me? I like to vary things up a bit.

The problem with that is, as I have found out to my cost, there is no uniform way of describing the size of a coffee across the main chains. Too often I walk in and order my preferred order from another chain out of habit to condemnation.

Ask for a Grande Skinny Caramel Latte (my Starbucks order) in Caffe Nero and you get a very large, wholly different drink with cream on top (as well as a perplexed look from the barista).

No, if you want that same drink in Caffe Nero, what you have to ask for is: ‘A regular skinny latte with a shot of caramel syrup’. You can barely say that in one breath. Wondering what I’m going on about? Then check out these descriptions of the ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ sizes in the main high street chains:

Starbucks

Small – Tall

Medium – Grande

Large – Venti

Caffe Nero

Small – Unknown (not even listed on menu, even though it is available. Tut, tut)

Medium – Regular

Large – Grande

Costa Coffee
Small – Primo

Medium – Medio

Large – Assimo

Eat
Small – Flat White only

Medium – Small

Large – Big

Pret
Small – N/A

Medium – Tall

Large – Grande

Only one drink across all the chains is described the same: the large – or grande – coffee in Pret and Caffe Nero. For all the rest, it’s something different every time.

Perhaps the most perplexing is the ‘tall’ coffee – which in Starbucks means a ‘small’ and in Pret means a ‘medium’. Eh? Common sense would suggest that a tall coffee is the largest, right? Wrong. It is something that has got the big wigs at Plain English hot under their lexical collars, and rightly so.

There’s method in the madness of course – for the coffee sellers, anyway. Having these different naming conventions adds confusion and leads to the customer ordering the larger – and thus more profitable – drink. In Caffe Nero, for example, the small size isn’t even on the menu, but it does exist.

Can’t we just standardise all this and be done with it? Can’t medium mean medium and large mean large? I have personally given up. Now I just use ‘medium’ or ‘large’ and leave it to the barista to waggle the cup at me to confirm the size.

And I have a golden rule: never order a drink you can’t say in one breath. It’s actually harder than it sounds – especially if you have to end with ‘to take away’.

Do that, and maybe ordering Presidents will become a thing of the past.