Hope stirs in the fight to free the milk and sugar at Starbucks

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. John Coleman has learned to live with his coffee habit, but most Starbucks baristas can’t stomach his request for eight packets of sugar and just the right amount of milk. Starbucks moved the sugar and milk behind the counter during the pandemic.

But Coleman is among the chain’s regulars bemoaning the decision to keep the condiment bar closed. “Literally, it’s different every day," said Coleman, a 52-year-old software sales executive from Evanston, Ill., about how baristas serve his Venti coffee. “It’s worse for me and it’s got to be worse for them." Drip coffee drinkers already feel forlorn as Starbucks has leaned into supplying fancier drinks, like the Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso and TikTok-inspired Strawberry Cheesecake Frappuccino.

Now, they feel shafted by coffee shops hiding creamers, forcing them to specify add-ons that can draw eye-rolls from employees or groans from patrons in line. Add imprisoned condiments to the list of Covid-era restaurant practices that won’t leave, like QR code menus and disposable dishes when dining in. Pamela Braren takes her Starbucks coffee with half a packet of Sugar in the Raw and a smidgen of milk.

When a harried barista heeds her request to doctor the brew, it typically comes out too light, she said. When they dispense the milk on the side, Braren ends up with a lamentable waste. “I think the baristas are young, and probably not drinking straight coffee, so they just don’t understand," said Braren, a 52-year-old accountant from Westwood, Mass., and Starbucks shareholder who has dialed back visits to every few months from several times a week because of the squirreled-away condiments.