How Starbucks Became a Sugary Teen Emporium

Early one afternoon in June at a Starbucks in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, the kids start to trickle in. First a small group, two girls and a guy. Then two boys in private school uniforms. Victor, 12, stops in once or twice a day, he says, whether for a pastry, a medium no-ice strawberry açaí lemonade Refresher, a cookie Frappuccino or even just free water. Wren and Zoe, both 15, arrive next, with identical orders: venti strawberry açaí lemonade Refreshers and ham and Swiss croissants. Wren says she’s been coming since she was 10, while Zoe claims to have started at 2, but both agree it all began with cake pops before they moved up the menu ladder. Wren says her parents used to object, worried it wasn’t healthy. But then “everyone started getting it, so my parents would feel bad if I didn’t.” The girls now come in about four times a week after school.

The real rush starts around 3 p.m. In one group of eighth-grade girls, several get a slightly different variation of a grande strawberry açaí Refresher—with the same amount of sugar as a Butterfinger, plus the caffeine of about a half an average cup of coffee. Cold drinks in bright hues and endless configurations are exactly what’s in demand among Generation Z, those currently age 11 to 27 as the company defines it and a “key customer cohort for Starbucks,” as then-interim Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz put it on an earnings call a couple of years ago. Customization, he said, was “raising the ticket” and bringing “color and excitement to the Gen Z audience, and they immediately put it on social media.”