“Grande,” “Venti,” And “Trenta”: What Do The Starbucks Sizes Literally Mean?

Many questions pop to mind when you order coffee. Can the barista write your name on the coffee? What size do you need? What do Venti, trenta, and other sizes really refer to at Starbucks?

What do Great, Venti, and Trenta refer to at Starbucks?

In the beginning, here are the sizes traditionally offered by Starbucks: tall (12 ounces), grande (16 ounces), Venti (24 ounces) as well as trenta (31 pounds).

Let’s talk about the term “tall.” The coffee company is regarded by many as a classic instance of corporate manipulation of language. Tall rhymes with small; however, it means something like the opposite. This may encourage consumers to think less about the quantity of the drink and also the total size of the cost.

It is interesting to note that the tall drink size was not always the largest size of a drink, and those who ordered ever-larger beverages might be a factor in the name.

Starbucks, the company’s founder, Howard Schultz, traveled to Italy for the first time in 1983. He became enthralled by “the romance and theater of coffee,” according to the Starbucks website. (The first Starbucks in Italy was opened on the streets of Milan on the 1st of the year, 2018.)

In his first cafe, Il Giornale, Schultz offered three sizes: short (8 8 ounces), tall, and large. When Venti was introduced (to satisfy the demand of customers), Schultz dropped the short not to overcrowd the menus.

In terms of the literal meanings of sizes? Grande is Italian, meaning “large.” Venti means “twenty,” and Trenta is “thirty.” Why isn’t the 16-ounce size known as the sedici (Italian meaning “sixteen”) instead? Maybe because “grande” brings to mind images of it being associated with the English Grand. What if we follow this reasoning and apply names like English words to the other two sizes? The less familiar Venti, as well as Trenta, might help customers forget the price or calorie number of what they are going to consume.