Fall is on the menu as pumpkin spice coffee celebrates 20th anniversary

A fall favourite is back and its celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Pumpkin spice coffee has been fan favourite each fall at java shops across the country for the past 20 years. Some even consider it an unofficial marker of the season.

To celebrate the anniversary, Starbucks has released its fall drinks and treats menu earlier than usual, allowing customers to line up starting Thursday.

The 2023 fall lineup includes:

• Pumpkin spice latte
• Pumpkin cream cold brew
• Iced pumpkin cream chai tea latte (new)
• Iced apple crisp oat shaken espresso (new)
• Pumpkin cream cheese muffin
• Pumpkin and pepita loaf
• Fox sugar cookie

“We started with a huge brainstorm list and filled the wall with ideas,” said Peter Duke, lead developer of the Starbucks pumpkin spice phenomenon 20 years ago. “We probably had at least a hundred ideas up on the wall. And once we got those ideas, we started to whittle away at them and came down to a list of about 20 different flavours including chocolate and caramel – the most popular flavours to pair with coffee – and there was orange and cinnamon… and there was pumpkin there as well.”

In a press release, Starbucks said that members of the company’s “liquid lab” sampled a forkful of pumpkin pie followed by a sip of espresso to test the flavour combination.

The pumpkin spice latte — almost called the “fall harvest latte” — was created and tested in about 100 Starbucks in Washington D.C. and Vancouver on a crisp fall day in 2003.

The debut was a smashing success, and Starbucks officially rolled out the drink across the country the next fall.

The chain said pumpkin spice was a blockbuster seasonal release, second only to the earlier release of peppermint mocha.

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