Starbucks Is Being Sued For Ripping Off Its Customers
You know that problem-when you order a Starbucks drink and the barista only fills it, like, halfway up. You scramble over to the sugar-and-milk bar to try and drown your disappointment...but the damage has been done.
Two California-based Starbucks regulars decided they've had enough. Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles are suing the company for purposefully underfilling latte cups-and ripping customers off. In a class action suit files this week, the two claim that Starbucks is shorting drivers by 25 percent, which they say is an act of fraud that will cut company costs.
Starbucks "has saved countless millions of dollars in the cost of goods sold and was unjustly enriched by taking payment for more product than it delivers," says the suit. Even worse, GrubStreet reports that the pair insists that this is a corporate-wide conspiracy. They say that in 2009, Starbucks execs instituted a system in all of its stores for preparing lattes: new milk pitches with "fill lines" etched in so that drinks would all get poured evenly. That, apparently, was all the proof they needed for their suit.
Apparently , when baristas my a 16-ounce latte, they are required to use 12 ounces of milk, plus two 1-ounce shots of espresso-which only actually equal 14 ounces. Also to note: the foam doesn't count towards a drink's volume because foam is categorically measured by mass. (Science-y stuff that is important-we promise.)
Starbucks execs say that the suit doesn't hold because their beverages are "hand-crafted," so their sizes will innately change. They also claim that they inform customers as much. But until this whole thing gets sorted out, you might want to pay a little more attention to your barista.
