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I'm not so sure. At all the coffee shops around where I live, whenever you order a macchiato, they have to quiz you to make sure you want an actual macchiato,

I'm not so sure. At all the coffee shops around where I live, whenever you order a macchiato, they have to quiz you to make sure you want an actual macchiato, and not the sugar-filled concoction Starbucks labels a "macchiato." I could see the same thing happening with flat whites, which have certain dimensions as part of their definition. It's annoying when a large chain redefines an established, useful term.

dpark 11y ago
To be fair, Starbucks calls their thing a "caramel macchiato". I'm not sure they are fully to blame for people inexplicably deciding that "macchiato" on its own somehow means "cup of caramel sauce". For the flat white, I understand the concern about sizing, but I can't see it making any kind of sense economically to keep specially-sized cups on hand for this, nor can I see serving it "with room" in an 8oz cup, since they'd constantly get people asking why it's not full. Realistically, pretty much no one is ordering an 8oz cup of anything in Starbucks, anyway. Everyone thinks they need 16 ounces of milk with their coffee. Hard to justify a lot of concern about serving the perfect 5.5oz size when the most common word before "flat white" is probably "grande". And that's not just at Starbucks, but at pretty much any cafe in the US.