All sizes of Starbucks’ paper cups hold the same amount of liquid.
Fact Check
Starbucks’ coffeehouses sell beverages in a variety of sizes using its trademark paper cups, including the popular “tall” (12-ounces), “grande” (16-ounce), and “venti” (20-ounce) sizes. But according to a popular internet rumor, Starbucks is scamming its customers with this system, because, supposedly, all of its to-go cups hold the same amount of liquid.
In May 2022, a video went viral on Facebook that supposedly showed a person pouring coffee from one cup (A) into another one that appeared larger (B). While one would expect the contents of the small cup (A) to only partially fill up the larger cup (B), the video appeared to show that the same amount of coffee filled both cups to the brim.
This video was deceptively edited. The various cup sizes at Starbucks do not hold the same amount of liquid.
While we’re not entirely sure how the video above was created — our best guess is that the larger cup (B) had a false bottom to take up some volume space — we can say for certain that this video does not accurately represent the amount of liquid in two different sized Starbucks cups. How? Well, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone claim that different sized cups hold identical amounts of liquid.
This video is just the latest iteration of an…
