"I Can't Imagine Being So Entitled": Morning Coffee Drives A Wedge Between MIL And DIL

If seasonal depression has your eyelids feeling heavier with each day, coffee is probably your best friend. And you're not in bad company: two-thirds (66%) of Americans drink coffee every day, with one person consuming three cups on average per day.

Everyone has a personal coffee order, but should we demand that our family members make us fancy concoctions? This daughter-in-law might've just made that mistake when she misunderstood her MIL's offer to make her coffee in the mornings and demanded a barista-level drink with foamed milk, syrups, and fancy coffee beans.

Making a cup of joe seems like it's one of the easiest things to do in the world. After all, more than half of Americans do it every morning. However, as probably any barista would tell you, gone are the days when instant or steeped coffee was the rage.

Coffee orders are getting more complex as orders like a Frappuccino with cold foam and 10 modifiers come in more and more. Yet, when we look at the most popular types of coffee that Americans like to drink, we might get a surprise.

Data from millions of coffee purchases in the U.S. by the Specialty Coffee Association and Square showed that the most popular drink in America is the latte. What's more, the average American adds two additional ingredients to their coffee order. It seems pretty simple, right?

People in other parts of the world like the latte as well, with it being the most popular coffee beverage in the UK, for example. Italians love espresso, Germans go for an Americano, and Australians prefer a flat white.

Recently, in an effort to determine the most popular coffees by region, Coffeeness analyzed Google search data to find out which beverages people Google most often. They found that cappuccino is the most popular drink in the world, topping the list in 24 countries, including Spain, Kenya, France, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands.

Perhaps surprisingly, espresso is the most searched drink in the U.S. Cappuccino and latte take second and third place, respectively, yet drinks like iced coffee, affogato, mocha, or macchiato aren't in the popular ranks.

So, the ultimate question is: are people's coffee orders getting too complicated? Why can't folks just drink a cup of good ol' pour-over, especially when they're at home? You might think of people whose coffee looks more like a milkshake as pretentious, but Starbucks and other coffee shops are only doing what they need to stay relevant.

As editor at Inc. and business editor at Time magazine Bill Saporito writes in an op-ed for The New York Times, almost all big food and beverage franchises do the opposite of less is more. Fast-food chains have almost infinite menus, with Pizza Hut, for example, offering flatbreads, brownies, mini rolls, and cookies. "Because you always want a Cinnabon after you've consumed three slices of pepperoni pizza," Saporito quips.

Starbucks boasts that it has more than 170,000 possible drink combinations. While outside reports estimate it to be more like 300 million, that's still a heck of a lot. These numbers don't help the employees, too: in 2021, workers complained to The Guardian that they felt like "coffee-making robots."

"These orders are driving us insane because they're so long, so specific and it requires you to do much more work than you should be doing for one single drink," a shift supervisor at a New York Starbucks told The Guardian.

Wait times are getting longer, employees report staff shortages, and customers often take out their frustrations by verbally attacking workers. Complex orders are a contributing factor, with people getting inspiration from TikTok trends and sharing "secret menu" drinks of their own recipes.

Making yourself a fancy coffee with five add-ons is no crime and can be a good form of self-care or a part of a coffee enthusiast's hobby. But maybe let's not make our poor mothers-in-law whip out three different syrups and a frother at 6 AM after she just came home from her night shift, shall we?