​Ticket for Coffee Shop Frustration: Ordering Black Coffee

In a nation awash in Pistachio Cream Cold Brew and Iced Chocolate Almondmilk Shaken Espresso with Chestnut Praline Syrup, black-coffee drinkers like Mr. Wicker are becoming a rare breed.

What lovers of straight black consider simple, easy-to-pour orders can wind up stuck behind a jam of customized, multipump concoctions, they said. Sometimes their pristine black joe is lightened with sugar or cream anyway. Some baristas seem bewildered by the concept of coffee taken plain. 

Mr. Wicker said his purist take on coffee makes him feel like an outcast. “I don’t know a single person within my age range that enjoys drinking black coffee,” he said.

Hassles over getting black coffee aren’t unique to

Starbucks,

which Mr. Wicker patronizes, but afflict many chains offering complicated, customizable brews, according to black-coffee enthusiasts.

Austin Evans, a 33-year-old nurse anesthetist from Tulsa, Okla., said the drive-through lines at his local Dunkin’ cafes are often clogged with people ordering complicated drinks, even when he pulls up at 6:30 a.m. for his black coffee. “It seems like a system that just is not sustainable,” he said. 

Asked about Starbucks Corp.’s black-coffee practices, a company spokesman referred to a recent earnings call in which executives said that new equipment is increasing efficiency and improving service times.

Dunkin’ Chief Marketing Officer Jill Nelson said customers can get their drinks faster by ordering ahead on the chain’s app, and that the company is always looking for ways to improve things for customers. She said it recently introduced a darker blend to please black-coffee drinkers.

Bashar Muslih, a 27-year-old systems engineer, said he waited 30 minutes last month at the Grass Valley, Calif., Starbucks for his black coffee. He said his 10-second pour was held up by orders taking far longer.

“When you’re waiting at Starbucks for your black coffee but the person before you ordered venti ice crisscross apple sauce double shot check engine oat milk diet coke macchiato with light triangle ice cubes,” he vented on Twitter. Mr. Muslih said he still goes to Starbucks. 

If black-coffee drinkers feel like a shrinking minority, it’s because they are. The number of iced lattes, cold brews, iced mochas and iced Americanos on coffee chain menus rose by double digits in the past five years, while regular-filter coffee options declined 24%, data from market research firm Technomic Inc. show.

Tim Noble, 60, an auto industry product manager, said he sometimes gets confused looks when he asks baristas at his local Detroit Starbucks to fill his coffee to the top of the cup, with no room for milk, syrups or foam. 

He said he used to add cream and sugar, but switched to black to save time and calories. It has been only half successful, he said, since he sometimes gets stuck behind long lines of cars in the drive-through, which he attributes to complex drinks that take time to construct. 

Bryce Bunting of Statesboro, Ga., chief executive of an industrial-valves company, said Starbucks could improve order wait times and boost sales by catering more to black-coffee drinkers like himself. 

“If they want to reach 1,500 orders per day, the answer is simple. Put in an express lane for black coffee so I don’t have to wait behind 20 people ordering a half-soy, mocha, latte Frappuccino,” said Mr. Bunting, who frequents Starbucks at the airport.

At Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, 80% of customers add milk, sweetener, syrups or other modifiers to their coffee, said Andrew Linnemann, the company’s vice president of global coffee and tea, during a recent coffee tasting at the company’s headquarters where black coffee was featured. Starbucks estimates that each year it sells about $1 billion of coffee drinks with “modifiers” such as syrups and sauces, a figure that has doubled since 2019. 

Howard Schultz,

the chain’s longtime leader, initially resisted offering frilly sweet drinks like the caramel Frappuccino. Mr. Schultz has said he still prefers his coffee black.

Some black-coffee drinkers said they take pride in being able to savor its strong, bitter taste without masking it with syrups and foams. 

“I think that black coffee is hard for a lot of people, especially if they are just starting out,” said University of Missouri student Blaise Fields, 19. “Some of the drinks do taste good—like I love a cold brew—but it’s too late for me.”

Some Starbucks baristas, who have to run back and forth across cafe prep areas to make complex drinks, said they wished more customers could appreciate the chain’s coffee in its purest form.

“I know black coffee is boring, but stop adding vanilla sweet cream cold foam to everything,” one Starbucks barista said in a TikTok video. “Try something simpler instead.” 

Many people don’t seem to know what black coffee is anymore, baristas said. Some customers will order black coffee, they said, and later complain it contained no sugar or cream. 

Abbey Clifford, a 25-year-old black-coffee drinker from Ohio, said she repeatedly gets her Dunkin’ coffee order back with cream in it. “Maybe they think I mean plain coffee, and that plain means just with one cream,” she said. “But that’s just not what black coffee means at all.” 

Some Starbucks workers said they themselves sometimes wonder whether black coffee should include sugar, or room for milk. They ask customers who order their coffee plain whether they also want it sweetened, just to make sure.

“It’s the biggest debate,” said Brooke Cross, a 20-year-old Starbucks barista in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “What is black coffee?”

Write to Heather Haddon at [email protected]

In a nation awash in Pistachio Cream Cold Brew and Iced Chocolate Almondmilk Shaken Espresso with Chestnut Praline Syrup, black-coffee drinkers like Mr. Wicker are becoming a rare breed.

What lovers of straight black consider simple, easy-to-pour orders can wind up stuck behind a jam of customized, multipump concoctions, they said. Sometimes their pristine black joe is lightened with sugar or cream anyway. Some baristas seem bewildered by the concept of coffee taken plain. 

Mr. Wicker said his purist take on coffee makes him feel like an outcast. “I don’t know a single person within my age range that enjoys drinking black coffee,” he said.

Hassles over getting black coffee aren’t unique to

Starbucks,

which Mr. Wicker patronizes, but afflict many chains offering complicated, customizable brews, according to black-coffee enthusiasts.

Austin Evans, a 33-year-old nurse anesthetist from Tulsa, Okla., said the drive-through lines at his local Dunkin’ cafes are often clogged with people ordering complicated drinks, even when he pulls up at 6:30 a.m. for his black coffee. “It seems like a system that just is not sustainable,” he said. 

Asked about Starbucks Corp.’s black-coffee practices, a company spokesman referred to a recent earnings call in which executives said that new equipment is increasing efficiency and improving service times.

Dunkin’ Chief Marketing Officer Jill Nelson said customers can get their drinks faster by ordering ahead on the chain’s app, and that the company is always looking for ways to improve things for customers. She said it recently introduced a darker blend to please black-coffee drinkers.

Bashar Muslih, a 27-year-old systems engineer, said he waited 30 minutes last month at the Grass Valley, Calif., Starbucks for his black coffee. He said his 10-second pour was held up by orders taking far longer.

“When you’re waiting at Starbucks for your black coffee but the person before you ordered venti ice crisscross apple sauce double shot check engine oat milk diet coke macchiato with light triangle ice cubes,” he vented on Twitter. Mr. Muslih said he still goes to Starbucks. 

If black-coffee drinkers feel like a shrinking minority, it’s because they are. The number of iced lattes, cold brews, iced mochas and iced Americanos on coffee chain menus rose by double digits in the past five years, while regular-filter coffee options declined 24%, data from market research firm Technomic Inc. show.

Tim Noble, 60, an auto industry product manager, said he sometimes gets confused looks when he asks baristas at his local Detroit Starbucks to fill his coffee to the top of the cup, with no room for milk, syrups or foam. 

He said he used to add cream and sugar, but switched to black to save time and calories. It has been only half successful, he said, since he sometimes gets stuck behind long lines of cars in the drive-through, which he attributes to complex drinks that take time to construct. 

Bryce Bunting of Statesboro, Ga., chief executive of an industrial-valves company, said Starbucks could improve order wait times and boost sales by catering more to black-coffee drinkers like himself. 

“If they want to reach 1,500 orders per day, the answer is simple. Put in an express lane for black coffee so I don’t have to wait behind 20 people ordering a half-soy, mocha, latte Frappuccino,” said Mr. Bunting, who frequents Starbucks at the airport.

At Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, 80% of customers add milk, sweetener, syrups or other modifiers to their coffee, said Andrew Linnemann, the company’s vice president of global coffee and tea, during a recent coffee tasting at the company’s headquarters where black coffee was featured. Starbucks estimates that each year it sells about $1 billion of coffee drinks with “modifiers” such as syrups and sauces, a figure that has doubled since 2019. 

Howard Schultz,

the chain’s longtime leader, initially resisted offering frilly sweet drinks like the caramel Frappuccino. Mr. Schultz has said he still prefers his coffee black.

Some black-coffee drinkers said they take pride in being able to savor its strong, bitter taste without masking it with syrups and foams. 

“I think that black coffee is hard for a lot of people, especially if they are just starting out,” said University of Missouri student Blaise Fields, 19. “Some of the drinks do taste good—like I love a cold brew—but it’s too late for me.”

Some Starbucks baristas, who have to run back and forth across cafe prep areas to make complex drinks, said they wished more customers could appreciate the chain’s coffee in its purest form.

“I know black coffee is boring, but stop adding vanilla sweet cream cold foam to everything,” one Starbucks barista said in a TikTok video. “Try something simpler instead.” 

Many people don’t seem to know what black coffee is anymore, baristas said. Some customers will order black coffee, they said, and later complain it contained no sugar or cream. 

Abbey Clifford, a 25-year-old black-coffee drinker from Ohio, said she repeatedly gets her Dunkin’ coffee order back with cream in it. “Maybe they think I mean plain coffee, and that plain means just with one cream,” she said. “But that’s just not what black coffee means at all.” 

Some Starbucks workers said they themselves sometimes wonder whether black coffee should include sugar, or room for milk. They ask customers who order their coffee plain whether they also want it sweetened, just to make sure.

“It’s the biggest debate,” said Brooke Cross, a 20-year-old Starbucks barista in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “What is black coffee?”

Write to Heather Haddon at [email protected]