The Secret Code Starbucks Used For Drinks Before Sharpies

For some customers, one of the best things about Starbucks is the endless array of customizations the company's baristas can make to drink orders — from adding a wide variety of Starbucks syrups and sauces to preparing drinks at specific temperatures to crafting popular Starbucks secret menu items. With more than 170,000 ways to personalize an order, it's not surprising that Starbucks sells more custom drinks than you might expect. In order to keep track of these inventive modifications, most drinks that you order these days will arrive with a printed sticker listing out the different drink specifications. But sometimes, you may still get a cup with customizations (and your name) written on it with a Sharpie marker. 

While the Sharpie has been around for some time, it wasn't widely implemented in Starbucks stores until the mid-1990s. Before that, there was a secret code that Starbucks baristas used to keep track of drink customizations, and it came down to the placement of the cups on the bar top. While the exact code varied from store to store, the principle was the same — namely, how a cup was placed on the bar indicated how the drink was to be made. For example, the direction the logo faced could mean whole milk versus non-fat milk and whether the cup was right side up or upside down could mean regular or decaf. 

Of course, this cup placement system only worked when there was a very limited menu of drinks and ordering options, and not the seemingly endless list of customizations available today. The bar placement code also wouldn't work very well if there were too many orders at once, and imagine the chaos that would ensue if there was a gust of wind (from say a door opening) or if they otherwise got knocked over. The Sharpie system also started getting phased out at some stores around the time of the pandemic in favor of the more precise printed labels, and some baristas who have only worked at Starbucks in the past few years have never been trained to use Sharpies on cups. 

But that looks to be changing really soon. According to CEO Brian Niccol in a recent Starbucks earnings call, the coffee chain plans to reintroduce the use of Sharpies as a way for baristas to "put that additional human touch on every coffee experience" in hopes of driving more customers to go into stores and order from the counter. To that end, Niccol estimates that Starbucks will need to order around 200,000 Sharpies to make this happen. So, while the cup placement system has long been phased out, it doesn't look like the classic handwritten cups will be going anywhere anytime soon.