6 Food Items You Should Never Order At Starbucks

Starbucks boasts a bevy of beverages both caffeinated and not, the most popular of which keep customers coming back on the regular. Devotees see the store not as a mere coffee purveyor, but as a reliable one-stop shop for both drinks and food. Whether you're looking for a grab-and-go hot breakfast item or a pastry to satisfy your sweet tooth, Starbucks certainly has plenty of offerings on its menu. With that said, not everything can be a hit. Among the list of breakfast, lunch, bakery, and snack items, there are several that simply don't pass muster with discerning gourmands.

Across social media, fans have taken to the web to express their displeasure with a number of Starbucks' food items. Between soggy, tasteless breakfast sandwiches, greasy pastries with no redeeming flavor, and tiny treats that aren't worth their big price tags, the Starbucks food menu has a great deal of room for improvement. If you want convenience, reasonable pricing, and thoughtfully packaged goods, it's best to steer clear of the following items.

This autumnal pastry comes around but once a season, yet it would honestly be best if kept off the Starbucks menu entirely. With a dried out attempt at pumpkin flavor, the scone is simultaneously moistureless in its general composition and frosted with an overdone saccharine glaze that leaves much to be desired, making for a most displeasing snack. Whereas the pumpkin cream cheese muffin stands up to scrutiny, its sibling scone is a poor attempt at a hot coffee go-with that, while designed to complement Starbucks' menu of fall flavors, nonetheless falls short.

A polarizing pasty for sure, what the pumpkin scone lacks in consistency, it makes up for with controversy. Although some will protest that it's simply a matter of warming up the pastry to an acceptable temperature to get the right texture and flavor, others would argue that the treat lacks any defining characteristics resembling those of an actual scone. Truly, if one has to work that hard to get the pumpkin scone to an adequate level of edibility, it just isn't worthwhile.

A good breakfast sandwich is hard to beat, but a lackluster one is hard to eat. This couldn't be more true for Starbucks' Sausage, Cheddar, & Egg sandwich, which you should definitely think twice about before buying. The floppy bread-like substance meant to resemble an English muffin filled with a trio of disappointing proteins really doesn't sell anyone on convenience or flavor. Having garnered complaints of overly salty sausage, strangely textured egg, and a frightfully bland bit of cheese, this sandwich is a recipe for disaster.

With reports that this breakfast sandwich, as well as most of Starbucks' other food offerings, arrives frozen to stores and is then thawed and briefly heated for consumption, it's no wonder that it's a swing and a miss. While some of Starbucks' foods do hold up to the freezing and thawing process, it's clear that the Sausage, Cheddar, & Egg sandwich does not. This one would be worth skipping in favor of a wrap or egg bite, both of which are considerably more palatable.

Although a mainstay of most cafes, Starbucks' Cheese Danish doesn't come anywhere close to a typically beloved bakery item that you can easily find elsewhere. The most important thing about a danish is having a thoughtfully crafted filling and enough of it to properly balance out the doughy housing. If your danish isn't properly filled and, worse, if what filling there is to speak of is beyond bland, you're looking at a most disappointing pastry. Unfortunately, Starbucks' Cheese Danish misses the mark across the board.

With a lackluster cheese substance resemblant of a paste made from non-dairy creamer, the truly unappetizing filling is then contained by an overly flaky yet oddly limp croissant-like dough. Whether you warm it or leave it cold, there isn't much that can be done to dress up the danish. This baked good is a letdown in terms of style and substance, and is definitely better left out of your order.

Added to the list of controversial Starbucks sandwiches you should think twice about ordering is the Chicken Maple Sandwich. Originally debuting in 2022, the sandwich was met with poor reviews and quality concerns, only to be pulled from menus less than a week later. Starbucks' attempted revival of the hotly contested sandwich in late September of 2024 only stood to garner more ire from dissatisfied customers and fed up baristas.

Although it is steeped in infamy for its documented quality issues, the one thing this sandwich lacks more than anything else is actual flavor. Between an incongruously sweet maple sauce covering up a chicken patty and bun each resemblant of a flat piece of cardboard, this sandwich is an incomprehensible debacle. Albeit an attempt to join the chat in the chicken sandwich wars, this was a major step in the wrong direction for Starbucks. What's more, if you do dare to try the Chicken Maple Sandwich, you may crunch into a bone.

Impossible though it may seem, Starbucks' plant-based breakfast sandwich is little more than a sorry and soggy mess. There's certainly nothing wrong with seeking a meat alternative for your breakfast protein needs; however, this one is overly salty with a notably mushy texture. It's disappointing that, not only does Starbucks have few meat-free options, but those it does have are nearly inedible, and you'd be well advised to look elsewhere if you want something that actually tastes good.

When compared to the Sausage, Cheddar, & Egg Sandwich, the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich is equally if not more of a letdown. There seems to have been little thought put into the composition of this breakfast sandwich, which is only distinguished from its pork sausage counterpart by nature of the Impossible patty. This vegetarian (but not vegan) food item further narrows down the choices for plant-based diners who are just looking for something that tastes good and will fulfill their dietary needs.

A cute food item that's both diminutive in stature and packaged as a convenient handheld surely couldn't be all that bad, right? Sadly, Starbucks' Chocolate Cake Pops are not worth the price of admission. Disappointingly little more than a bite or two, the overly sweet and weirdly textured desserts just don't fit the proverbial bill. Sure, they're often shaped like cute animals or icons, but these cake pops are little more than an impulse buy for which you'll likely feel near-immediate remorse.

Coming in at 160 calories each, these bite-sized indulgences are a waste in all senses of the word. You'd be much better off grabbing a slice of your favorite loaf cake or muffin from the bakery case and portioning it out for later than paying a premium for an icing-drenched mistake on a stick. In fact, the price tag might only be justified if you plan on repurposing your cake pop sticks for an arts and crafts project.