Upside down is a modification of the shot not the drink In my opinion. It’s not like you’re going to put the drizzle on the bottom and the pumps of vanilla on the top

The only correct way is to just hand the customer their cup upside down spilling the drink all over them in the process

it sinks to the bottom after a min anyways

it’s just opposite milk vs shots. so a vanilla latte with caramel drizz on top.

Nah it’s a latte with drizzle and one less pump. Drizzle doesn’t go on the bottom but it definitely sinks fast

It’s a Vanilla latte with one less pump of vanilla, and caramel drizzle on top. If you want, you can check the recipe in the recipe section on your store Ipad.

afaik it’s just a stirred caramel macchiato and then add drizzle

The only reason I have an inside to this was a 1999 meeting for the SF bay area number 51. It was the almost the whole SF peninsula that had to drive down to San Jose. It was "area 51" themed, and they played prince "party like it's 1999" and the theme to the X Files, and had inflatable aliens and ships and stuff. The late 90s had a thing for little green alien stuff. stickers, lighters, shirts... Most of you might have an Aunt who's almost 50 with a tramp stamp of an alien. It was nuts. So this VP guy, I remember his name as "joe plant" but it might be Plante or something, came out and told us his FAVE drink was the "iced UPSIDE DOWN caramel macchiato!" and we all were like: what the FUCK is that?


So he went on to tell us:

since the Caramel Macchiato was meant to be a layered drink you drink enjoying the caramel and shots on top, and finishing with the sweet milk - When drinking it iced you'd put the straw to the bottom of the drink and were enjoying it "backwards" It was meant to be built upside down. So you'd make the drink backwards caramel, shots, ice, milk, vanilla. you had to pour the milk slower to get it to not mix much.


and he told us this recipe for it. That's it, that's the ONLY time i ever heard someone above a DM ever talk about it as a recipe or ANYTHING.

it was never official in any capacity, there has been dozens of people in my 20+ years who'll tell me how it's made and all of them are different.


shots then caramel so the caramel doesn't stick.
vanilla then caramel then shots so it all melts.
vanilla, shots then caramel.
just make a one less pump vanilla latte with caramel on top.


to be honest, most of the way it's made today are just "stirred" in an order that they SWEAR is official.

Wow I guess unpopular opinion, but I always put drizzle on the bottom before the shots so that it mixes into the drink for “upside down”. If people want the drizzle on top still they should get it “stirred”. Why have the two different options if you’re not going to treat them differently?

I hate when my coworkers put the caramel on the bottom… the only reason people order it this way is so the espresso is mixed with the milk.

Upside down is upside down.

In a hot drink, that pretty much is a vanilla latte with caramel drizzle on the bottom.

In an iced drink you will still have layers and have drizzle on the bottom. A lot of baristas still do make it as a latte though.

i had a lady the other day order an upside down caramel macchiato w sf vanilla. she proceeded to tell me that i didn’t put the right amount of pumps of vanilla in. i had to explain that the drink gets one less pump of syrup than normal lattes and she still demanded i was wrong…okay. i let it go and kept making her drink and just added another pump because the argument wasn’t worth it. then i go to finish the drink and she demands i made it wrong (she was staring at me the entire time and critiquing every move i made) because “in an upside down the syrup goes on top. you must do everything backwards” i tried explaining that it typically means just changes where the shot goes but she wasn’t having it. i told her that if i did that she would only get like two sips of straight vanilla and then none in the drink but she kept insisting. i remade it the stupid way she asked with the sf vanilla on the very top of the ice and everything and just put it down and walked off because i was not going to listen to her complain about something i told her was going to be gross

I have never heard of the drizzle being on the bottom 😳