We ran out of mocha and white mocha on the same weekend and I was constantly asked in DTO "well what drinks *can* you make?" Like sir/ma'am, neither of us have the time for me to list the probably hundred other drinks/combinations we can make you...

i told someone on dt once we were out of mocha and she asked if that meant we couldn't make her a vsc cold brew

When we’re out of Mocha, just tell the customers we’re out of “Chocolate Sauce.” Maybe if we called it “Chocolate” sauce they would grasp it. We call the other one “White Chocolate” so why not? We don’t say “White Mocha”

After they had listed things with chocolate 2-3 times I would quickly switch to saying, "We are out of our mocha sauce, which is our chocolate, so we can't make any chocolatey beverages today." I don't have time to waste letting them try to order all the things with mocha. I'd rather find a way to help them understand our term for chocolate to help us both not waste our time. Some baristas would just stand there allowing them to list everything when a simple explanation helps. It's okay to have people come through who are not regulars and don't understand that particular coffee shops system.

Yep. most customers don't look at the ingredients. They don't know how an espresso machine works. They don't know the difference between a latte and a mucho except one taste like chocolate.

In this case it's clear they didn't know that "mocha sauce" is chocolate. I'd not expect them to. It could have been solved with "out of mocho sauce, so we can't do chocolate flavored drinks".

When they do know what's going on, then they start to complain even more. They know when the drink sucks, they know when you cut corners.

In honesty we don't want customers to know more about how the magic is done. They don't need to know that for $2k (worth of good machines) they could do this at home everyday and not stand in line.

This reminds of when our brewer broke and we put up a sign saying so. We even said we still have espresso drinks and that regular brewed coffee was going to take a bit since we had to do pour-overs. I can’t tell you how many people said “Oh. So you can’t make (espresso) drink?” We had three signs saying we still had espresso drinks.

no literally, THIS. i had two people come in the other day asking if we had pumpkin, i said no sorry we ran out. girl then proceeded to ask if we could do the pumpkin cold foam and im like sorry no, that also requires pumpkin sauce.

then the person she was with is on his phone seemingly trying to find another starbucks nearby and then they leave. like 😭 maam we are out of pumpkin and i’m 99% sure our neighbor stores are too LMFAO but good luck on that pumpkin search!

This happens so often! And more recently with all the shortages it seems we need a simplified list of what we CAN actually make that day.

you are bright - the customers are not

Okay so I’m just an Australian stalker / barista who thinks this is all really intriguing. I’ve never been to a Starbucks in my life, but I would probably think mocha sauce is chocolate sauce + coffee. Never heard of mocha meaning chocolate. Is that a Starbucks thing or an American thing?

Offer a peppermint white mocha?

People are stupid.

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My mom thinks mocha means coffee lol. She ordered a mocha cookie crumble frappe and they told her they didn’t have mocha but offered to sub white chocolate. She said yes.

Then complained they forgot the “chocolate” on top and inside 🤣

This exact thing happened to me today more than on e