Why the Starbucks Halloween Cocoa Black Tea Latte misfired

Starbucks launched two Halloween limited drinks at mainland China stores. The cold one was the Dark Night Pumpkin Frappuccino, brought over from Japan. The other, the Red Magic Cocoa Black Tea Latte, was made to be served hot only and arrived with a whipped cream topping in the promotional image. Many delivery customers found the topping gone on arrival, and some received the wrong syrup.

Store partners explained that heat melts the whipped cream during transport, leaving a bare liquid surface. Buyers compared the result to a witch's brew and questioned the product design. The gap between the poster and the cup became the center of the discussion, and it mirrors a familiar problem for iced caffe mocha starbucks orders where topping and build do not survive the trip.

This Halloween, Starbucks launched two limited-edition drinks at its mainland China stores. One was the Dark Night Pumpkin Frappuccino imported from Japan, and the other was the Red Magic Cocoa Black Tea Latte, created for the cooling weather. This tea latte, which can only be made hot, was supposed to attract customers with its gorgeous appearance. However, many people discovered after receiving their delivery that the whipped cream topping had vanished without a trace, and some even got a version with the wrong syrup added, making the final product look vastly different from the promotional image. Netizens complained that the drink looked like "witch's brew" and even questioned whether the product design was unreasonable. As coffee enthusiasts, Front Street Coffee has also noticed this phenomenon, and this article will provide a complete overview of the incident and the responses from all parties.

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Not long ago, Starbucks brought the Dark Night Pumpkin Frappuccino, which was launched in the Japanese market last year, to its mainland China stores as this year's Halloween limited-edition product, attracting many fans to place orders and give it a try.

However, in a season of steadily dropping temperatures, not every customer can happily accept this cold drink. So Starbucks, responding to the needs of some consumers, also launched a hot Red Magic Cocoa Black Tea Latte.

According to the promotional poster and the official app, this Halloween limited-edition drink can only be made hot and belongs to the tea latte category. Combined with its high aesthetic appeal (compared with the dark, murky Dark Night Pumpkin Frappuccino in the same series), it naturally attracted a group of fans who care about appearance and also do not want to consume too much caffeine to place orders and try it.

However, what shocked many consumers was that when they took the drink out of the delivery bag and opened the lid, the whipped cream topping on the Cocoa Black Tea Latte had collectively disappeared, leaving only a bare liquid surface. They looked at the promotional image, then glanced at the actual product in their hands, and one sentence immediately came to mind: "Excuse me, where is my topping?"

In response, Starbucks store partners quickly explained: because this drink can only be made hot, the whipped cream topping added on top melts quickly when it meets the hot drink, so delivery customers will mostly find that the whipped cream topping has already disappeared by the time they receive the drink.

Many customers who picked up their drinks in-store also confirmed that when they first received them, the drinks did indeed have whipped cream on top, but after being left for a while, the topping would melt away on its own. It was not that the staff had cut corners during preparation. Because of this, many customers who wanted to take photos chose to drink it on the spot, quickly snapping a few pictures before the whipped cream was eroded by the hot drink.

Even so, even with the whipped cream topping, fans could not help but sigh that the drink's appearance was truly shocking. "What is this thing," "looks disgusting," "extremely unappetizing," "instantly kills any desire to buy" — many joked that the actual product they received perfectly proved the poster's line, "Image for reference only."

It is worth mentioning that in some of the photos posted by netizens, Starbucks staff noticed the problem of "the topping being added incorrectly." They explained that the decorative syrups used for this new product are brown mocha sauce and rose-red raspberry syrup, but some staff, while busy, may have picked up the wrong syrup and mistakenly added the black caramel sauce used for another drink as if it were mocha sauce.

(The drinks on the left are all the wrong versions with black caramel sauce added, while the drinks on the right are all the correct versions with mocha sauce added.)

Some users said that Halloween drinks are originally meant to cater to the holiday atmosphere, letting colors rarely seen in daily life appear in drinks and prompting consumers to try them because of their exaggerated, vivid appearance. But when they found that they had received an unwatchable "seller's show" version, appearance-conscious customers, amid their disappointment, could not help but question the brand's new product development: "This design is unreasonable. It can only be hot, and once the lid is on, you can't see anything," and "Even if it's made pretty, it's still pointless."

But some optimistic netizens believed that although the new drink was ugly in all sorts of bizarre ways, didn't this "witch's brew" with the stranger the color, the more it fit the weird theme of Halloween? Thinking of it that way, it became barely acceptable.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.