Grounds for a lawsuit: Starbucks allegedly skimping on latte
Judge rules California plaintiffs can proceed with case claiming cups are chronically underfilled
Some people like their latte a lot — enough to sue on alleged grounds of foam fraud.
A California federal judge has ruled that two steamed Starbucks customers can move forward with their lawsuit accusing the giant coffee chain of underfilling their lattes.
And the plaintiffs can seek damages for fraud and false advertising, said U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco, thereby denying the chain’s motion in April to dismiss the claims, according to the Washington Post.
The complaint, filed in March by Siera Strumlauf of San Francisco and Benjamin Robles of Carlsbad, claims that Starbucks chronically under fills its latte cups because of a “standardized recipe” instituted in 2009 that is alleged to save the company money on milk.
They argue that, as a result, the consumer is served 25 per cent less of the beverage than advertised.
Starbucks is standing its ground, saying that all its drinks are made according to each individual customer’s preferences.
“If a customer is not satisfied with their beverage preparation, we will gladly remake it,” a Starbucks Canada spokeswoman, Madeleine Lowenborg-Frick, said Wednesday.
The Seattle-based company said the lawsuit is “without merit (and) we will be prepared to defend our case in court.”
So is it much ado about froth- ing, or a troublesome jolt for the beverage behemoth?
“There is potential damage even if the allegations are false,” said Ken Wong, a marketing professor at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business.
“This is no different than the count- less stories challenging whether McDonald’s food is what they claim, a situation that got so serious McDonald’s had to develop a whole marketing campaign, “Our Food, Your Questions,” to counter them,” he noted.
“My suggestion to Starbucks: kill it before it spreads,” Wong added.
In his14-page ruling in favour of the plaintiffs, Henderson wrote that Strumlauf and Robles had sufficiently presented three legal theories that they could proceed with in the suit.
In support of those theories, they had claimed that the frothy milk foam atop a Starbucks latte should not be factored into the total volume of the beverage.
They also alleged that the pitchers used to prepare lattes in all Starbucks locations have “fill to” lines that are below the advertised ounce amount. Lastly, the lawsuit references a recipe card, allegedly used by all baristas, which instructs the latte maker to “leave at least 1⁄ (inch) of
4 space below the rim of the serving cup.” In its motion to dismiss, Starbucks argued that because a latte is defined as an espresso drink made with steamed milk and topped with foamed milk, the milk, in all its forms, should be considered part of the drink’s fluid-ounce total.
But Henderson wrote last Friday that a “significant portion of the latte-consuming public” would believe that a grande Starbucks beverage, for example, would contain 16 ounces of fluid as advertised, “measured without milk foam or in its cooled state.”
A similar lawsuit filed in April in federal court accuses Starbucks of underfilling another popular caffeinated beverage: iced coffee.
In that complaint, the plaintiff argues that Starbucks iced coffees contain too much ice and not enough coffee, duping customers into paying for less liquid than advertised.
“Starbucks is misleading customers who expect to receive the advertised amount of fluid ounces,” states that class-action lawsuit.
Starbucks.ca describes latte in Canada as “smoothly steamed milk meets rich espresso” plus a “thin layer of foam.”