Iced Coffee: A look into Gen Z’s Addiction
Iced coffee is everywhere and it has taken over my life. Sitting in history I look around to see variations of plastic iced coffee cups dotting the corners of every desk. A single white Starbucks hot cup is found on the teacher’s desk, the cardboard sleeve directly to the side of it, signifying the drink has gone cold. After class I trudge to work. Seven hours go by and, like clockwork, all the kids walk in asking for their own twist on the classic iced coffee. Edward, a regular, walks in, a blazer slung over his arm. I scurry to grab the largest hot cup and fill it with piping hot black coffee, the droplets stinging my hand as it pours. By the time he’s reached the counter his order is complete.
Iced Coffees History
The iced coffee craze began around the 2010’s, but Starbucks launched their iced coffee all the way back in 1986. Since then, iced coffee has become an everyday beverage and not at all a delicacy. This chilled drink has taken a hold on a specific demographic though: Gen Z drinks iced coffee like no one else. In fact, according to the National Coffee Association, since 2014 there has been a 60% increase in the number of Americans aged 13–18 drinking coffee. These younger generations flock to coffee shops to order exclusively cold caffeinated drinks, while the older generations don’t even see cold coffee as a viable option. Iced coffee is only growing and as it slowly seeps into older generations, the craze has only just begun.
After School Sip
Generation Z lives off trends. Every trend means a new lifestyle change that lasts about three months and then is quickly abandoned in search for the next best thing. One trend though, that hasn’t met its end is the impregnable need to grow up. Throughout history in the western world coffee has been a marker for adulthood. Most adults in our lives drink coffee, whether it be six or two cups a day, coffee is directly linked to adulthood. The insatiable thirst for anything that’ll elevate your appearance has led Gen Z to make coffee the new soda. After school, middle schoolers will form a line outside Dunkin to buy their favorite afternoon snack, a large iced coffee. Coffee in hand they sit down at the most aesthetically pleasing coffee shop and get to work on the hours worth of homework they’ve accumulated throughout the day. Looking through a window you would think they’re just a group of college students working on their latest project.
The Infamous “Tik Tok Drink”
These so-called “little adults” are obsessed with coffee, but why iced? If you walk into a starbucks you’ll see more sugar than coffee. Tik Tok has created a coffee culture that stems from sharing “Starbucks orders”. These orders quickly circulate the app and gain insane popularity with Gen Z. What do all of these orders have in common? They all have a million different pumps of uniquely flavored syrups and they overflow with cold foam, a sort of blended sweet milk foam popularized by Starbucks. These sometimes colorful and almost always aesthetically pleasing drinks, are ordered by every other middle schooler at Starbucks. I asked my co-worker what her least favorite drink to make was and without a second thought five people exclaimed in defeat “the Tik Tok drink”. But while the infinite choices that iced coffee brings could be a huge reason for Gen Z’s obsession, a more subconscious effect of social media lies within.
Fast and Faster
Gen Z is social media’s top consumer in today’s world. Most of us grew up with the birth of the iphone, and many of us can’t remember a time before social media. For those of us privileged enough, the internet has let us access parts of the world we would have never seen otherwise. This privilege, though, has molded our brains to expect answers the second we ask for them. Most of us don’t even have to go outside to find out what temperature it is. The world is quite literally at our fingertips, and we have been conditioned to expect nothing less. This need for efficiency applies even to something as mundane as a coffee order. Think about the first thing you do when you receive your fresh cup of hot coffee. The answer is you don’t drink it, that is if you want to avoid a burn that goes all the way down your throat. As you watch the steam float off the top of your cup, minutes go by. In the time that it takes for your hot coffee to cool to a drinkable temperature, you could have drank half of your medium size iced latte. Without realizing it Gen Z continuously opts for efficiency, and iced coffee is exactly that.
No More Soda
The clear switch from soda to coffee in this new generation is actually quite influenced by socioeconomic status. In low income urban areas sodas still reign as a kids drink of choice. While initially cost seems to be the reason, a bottle of Pepsi is actually quite comparable to a Dunkin iced coffee, price wise. So why such a shift? In high income suburban areas the fixation with college starts at a very early age. Talking from personal experience, the workload that is put on kids, whether it be self inflicted or not, is overwhelming. Late nights filled with textbooks and last minute essays are the norm, and an extra large iced coffee on the bedside table is the expected accessory. In this bubble-like suburban world, college is everything, which means essays are typed out till the caffeine crash finally hits. But after two hours of sleep are rudely interrupted by an alarm clock, a coffee to get through first period is the only answer. This endless loop of sleep deprivation and stress has created a generation of kids that almost need coffee to get through the day.
As I write the concluding paragraph to this indepth and somewhat intuitive look at why the fixation with iced coffee only continues to grow, I find myself drinking a venti iced coffee with oat milk. Something as ordinary as the classic plastic cup sitting atop my desk hides the secrets of a new caffeine loving generation. The answers as to why iced coffee has such a hold on Gen Z may never be fully discovered, but we can all agree that the addiction only continues to grow. Serving a boiling hot cup of coffee to an old man on a hot summer day reminds me that iced coffee is not merely about the temperature, it’s Gen Z’s version of America’s coffee culture.