The Frappuccino generation

Starbucks says it doesn't market to kids. But its sugary coffee confections represent the new cool for teens. While nutritionists are gasping, the caffeinated kids are buzzing.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Read more: Starbucks, Teenagers, Coffee, Katharine Mieszkowski, Life

Illustration by Val B. Mina

Aug. 27, 2006 | It's just before 6 p.m. on a Wednesday night in Oakland, Calif., and the Starbucks on Lakeshore Avenue is packed. It has all the usual trappings of bland urbanity and sophistication: brick walls behind a line of baristas, oversize comfy chairs for lounging, and humming laptops scattered amid paper cups. About a quarter of the customers are under age 18. A tween boy out with his mom happily quaffs a milkshake-like Frappuccino, topped with a plastic lid shaped like a dome to accommodate the puffy mound of whipped cream drenched in caramel on top. Out front, teens sit at metal tables drinking their iced mochas, as they chat and check out passersby.

Kara Murray, 16, and Giana Cirolia, 16, breeze in from their summer internships. As part of a teen "leadership" program, Kara is working at the Oakland City Hall this summer, while Giana is deployed 9-to-5 at a local food bank. For these girls, who are both going into their junior year at Berkeley High School, summer is not about just hanging out. Tonight, they're taking an hour out from their busy schedules to explain to me how gourmet coffee has become the drink of choice at their high school, supplanting not soda so much as lunch altogether. "Think $4," says Giana. "That's what you pay for lunch. Not for coffee and lunch. Coffee is lunch. It's like the new mashed potatoes. Coffee is comfort food, especially when it rains."

And that's comfort to Starbucks and other makers of gourmet coffee, who are capitalizing on a boundless new world of teenage customers. To the Beyoncé set, coffee is the new cool. It hops them up with a wallop of caffeine that's much stronger than soda. As Giana says, "Kids go on a sugar, caffeine high all day." Nutritionists are not jazzed, of course, especially with childhood obesity on the rise. Those sugary, creamy coffee drinks are packed with enough calories to make a can of Dr. Pepper seem like Slim-Fast.

But the coffee chains are not deterred. In an affront to the earnest efforts of parents, teachers and school administrators to get soda vending machines out of schools, coffeehouses are moving in right down the street to meet demand for sugar and caffeine. There are two Starbucks within two blocks of Giana and Kara's high school as well as an outpost of the local chain, Peet's Coffee and Tea, and an independent coffeehouse.

Always careful to tailor its image as a socially responsible company, and differentiate itself from fast-food brethren like McDonald's, Starbucks states its "overall marketing, advertising and event sponsorship efforts are not directed at children or youth." But by creating a place where kids can go that sells sweetened drinks, which make bitter coffee palatable to younger taste buds, cafes are finding a way to hook (and brand) tomorrow's coffee drinkers earlier. Not that the smart kids don't know this. After all, when did health concerns ever trump peer pressure and the need to be cool?

"Almost all my older friends drink coffee," says Kara, explaining that she got into a chai tea latte habit last year, as a sophomore. Going out to Starbucks, "I feel very grown up," she says. "I hate to say that, but I feel super grown up." It's like the thrill of a trip to a fancy restaurant with your friends sans parents. Teachers don't seem to mind. Many of them let kids bring the drinks into class, whereas eating something as pedestrian and wholesome as a sandwich would be verboten. Although, Kara and Giana report, kids do seem to have a problem with all the coffee at noon. Fourth period, right after lunch, they are really wired, but by sixth they are crashing.

The fancy coffee drinks hold a special appeal to girls. Their cool factor is burnished by celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and bulimic Lindsay Lohan sporting oversize Starbucks cups in countless public appearances. For weight-conscious girls, the blended Frappuccino drinks and mochas can be a socially acceptable way to indulge. "It's like dessert, but you can have it for any meal," Giana says. "I feel like a lot of girls drink coffee because they don't want to eat." For girls who are trying to hide the fact that they're skipping meals, drinking coffee gives them cover. (Boys, the girls say, are more inclined to get their caffeine fixes from energy drinks. One of Giana's friends claims to have consumed seven cans of Red Bull in one day.)

Giana doesn't buy Starbucks' claim that it's not marketing to kids. She points to the section of the menu that's thick with chocolate, caramel and whipped cream. "That's the kids menu," she says, which she notes sagely is not good for diabetes. She compares the way the creamy drinks mask the bitter taste of coffee with how fruity mixed drinks make it easier for teens to down alcohol. "It's like chocolate milk for big kids," she says.

For the kids at their school who do drink coffee every day, there's no stigma to being addicted. On the contrary, teens practically boast about needing their coffee fix, the girls say. Still, Kara has some ideas about where this can lead. "I feel like it's like cigarettes," she says. "You start in high school because its cool, and you think that after college you'll quit, but then you never do."

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