How Big Is a Coffee Cup? The Answer Isn't Obvious

The modular serving size that Mr. Coffee arrived astatine was a 5-ounce “cup,” astir the size of a British teacup. Though this whitethorn look tiny now, it really did correspond to the size of the cups radical utilized for java astatine the time, Esposito says.

It’s besides the size that Esposito, a autochthonal of Italy, inactive considers “reasonable.”

Blame It connected the Mermaid

You tin demarcate java cups successful America into 2 periods: B.S. and A.S.

Everything began to alteration successful the precocious ’80s, Esposito says, determination astir the clip a erstwhile Xerox salesman named Howard Schultz decided to instrumentality a Seattle-founded java store onto the nationalist stage. After Starbucks, java cups got bigger.

“They created their ain connection for each of their drinks and sizes and everything. So a ‘small’ to Starbucks is truly benignant of similar a ‘large’ everyplace else,” says Jemison, the Portland java instrumentality salesperson.

“From my memory, until Starbucks, astir of the java drinks were reasonable. I mean, the cups were a tenable size,” Esposito confirms to WIRED. “And past the larger sizes were introduced.”

It’s probable that mug ostentation had already begun anterior to the Venti diaspora. But arsenic Starbucks expanded successful the ’90s, Esposito says, different section cafés felt the request to compete. The café cups got bigger, and truthful did her customers’ perceptions of however large a “cup” is.

Now, erstwhile customers get astatine Fante’s to get a java maker, she has to halt to explicate that a coffee-machine cupful doesn’t correspond to a measuring cup, and it besides doesn’t correspond to the cupful her customers really portion java retired of.

“When radical travel successful and inquire for a java shaper and they look astatine ‘12 cups,’ we automatically explain, ‘That's not the size of, you cognize … 12 of your cups,’” she said.

Just Double It

But adjacent though we portion java cups astir doubly arsenic large arsenic we utilized to, java shaper companies person nary peculiar inducement to alteration their cupful sizes. Doing truthful would marque their instrumentality look fractional arsenic large arsenic it utilized to be, and fractional arsenic large arsenic competitors’.

The math, instead, falls connected you: You'll request 2 “cups” for 1 serving, astatine slightest if you portion retired of a 10-ounce oregon truthful java mug that’s present considered standard. It’ll instrumentality 4 cups, however, to capable a Yeti mug oregon 1 of those Stanley brew steins immoderate people similar to portion java retired of these days.