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The Legend of Old School Iced Coffee Goes Nationwide |
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Saturday, 21 May 2005 |
When Starbucks first started selling Iced Coffee it was just coffee brewed with half the water, chilled, then poured over ice. Half the water keeps the flavor strong as the ice melts.
About a year or so ago some of their market research folks got in there and started messing around. This lead to adding a few pumps of sweetener and shaking the iced coffee like a martini. I tried the new style, but by this time I was hopelessly addicted to the strong and bitter flavor of the original recipe of just coffee and ice.
A few days after the new shaken iced coffee came on the scene I was trying to explain I wanted it the old way and said I wanted it, "old school". I'm not sure what inspired this half gangster / half Frank the Tank lingo, but it stuck.
The term caught on with the local Starbucks employees and they picked it up as shorthand for "no classic, unshaken". Instead, they just say "old school". Some of my barista buddies at my usual haunts even write "old school" on the cup. I was impressed when a few weeks ago a friend of mine ordered a "no classic, unshaken" iced coffee at a Starbucks outside of my usual Starbucks radius and they instantly recognized it as "old school".
Then, just today, the phenomenon went to a whole new level. I'm in Philadelphia, 850 miles from where "old school" originated in Nashville. My wife ordered an "unshaken, unsweetened" iced coffee at the location in the King of Prussia Mall while I was in the bathroom. When I came out and they delivered my drink the barista announced it as "old school iced coffee".
I was floored. Can it be that "old school" iced coffee spread nationwide?
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