Earlier this week, one of the Sprudge editors was visiting a coffee shop, as Sprudge editors are wont to do. It was a good shop, one squarely within the ever-expanding definition of a specialty cafe. And so they ordered a macchiato, where they were asked, “you mean like the little one, right? Not the Starbucks one?”
As we posted about on Instagram, the question felt anachronistic, belonging to the early days when specialty coffee was fighting tooth and nail to distinguish itself from the likes of places like Starbucks. From an outsider’s perspective, which is to say, someone whose daily routine doesn’t involve a bar shift, the question is almost unthinkable. 15 years on and the battle is over. Specialty coffee is a household thing. But is it?
Which is why we posed the question on Instagram: do your cafe customers still think “macchiato” means the big Starbucks drink with all the caramel? The short answer is that, yes, all the time.
Of the nearly 1,000 poll responses as of press time, a full 70% of followers answered “Yes, this still happens all the time.” Another 25% of respondents selected “Unfortunately this still occasionally happens.” That means according to this purely exploratory poll, something like 95% of cafes are still being forced to deal with The Macchiato Question on a daily basis.
That is just astonishing. And annoying! But the question nonetheless allowed for folks to provide thoughtful answers on the importance of hospitality and the need to meet customers where they are. (There were also a lot of bad takes, but we won’t talk about those.) Thus, almost as a bit of a state of the union for specialty coffee in 2025, we’re collecting some of the comments here.
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First and foremost, what “macchiato” a customer means here in the Year of Our Lord Twenty and Twenty-Five still requires clarification. “Yes. All the time” (twice), “Every gd day,” “It’s wild but yes,” “Every. Single. Day.,” “We still have to clarify *every single time*,” etc. You get the idea.
So there’s still confusion. A lot of it. The question then becomes how a cafe chooses to deal with it, with many seeing it lead to “some valuable conversations so it’s still maybe a win?” “We love when folx ask for macchiatos… it opens the door for conversation since we want to make the right drink.” Another stated, “Is it ever out of style to ask clarifying questions in an industry reliant on good hospitality and communication?”
Some cafes try to avoid confusion by not using the name at all, instead having customers order by drink size. Others use alternative names, like “cortado” (which could come with a whole other set of name-related problems, but at least it’s in the ballpark) and “noisette.”
Perhaps the bigger takeaway here is not the lack of movement in customer understanding but the shift from the other side of the bar. Back in 2010, if you had the gall to order a macchiato at a specialty cafe and mean a 20oz vanilla latte with a whole lot of caramel drizzle, you ran the risk of an upbraiding from a dude who looked like he rode a penny-farthing to work. That is not the case anymore. Hospitality is as important, if not more so, than the coffee itself. (Whether or not the pendulum has swung too far in the favor of hospitality to the detriment of coffee quality and consistency is a much spicier—but maybe necessary?—debate for another time.)
In 2025, you can order whatever you want, from the smallest ristretto to the XL flavored latte, and a good cafe is going to try to make you the best possible version of that drink without derision. Which is a good thing. Even if the macchiato question sends you into a late-aughts era mustache twirling death spiral.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
