The 6 Best And 6 Worst Discontinued Starbucks Drinks

Without even taking into account the roster of drinks on the secret menu, Starbucks has brought us a dizzying array of beverages over the years. Some have become so successful that they are now shorthand for personalities (looking at you, pumpkin spice latte), while others have fizzled out even before they could make it to menus nationwide. Starbucks seems to value variety in its lineup, introducing new drinks year-round and quietly retiring those that haven't gone according to plan.

Sadly, this elimination process claims good drinks as well as bad ones. Remember the Valencia Orange Refresher? It was a citrusy, slightly spicy delight that was so delicious that its inexplicable discontinuation prompted zealous fans to start petitions urging for its return. And how about the luxurious Eggnog Latte? It heralded the beginning of the festive season with comforting spices and an indulgent texture, and its demise in 2021 sent fans into an uproar. 

However, sometimes Starbucks does get it right and it pulls drinks that never quite made sense. The infamous Unicorn Frappuccino, for example, was a beverage better suited to social media feeds than actual consumption, while the Maple Pecan Latte somehow managed to miss the mark on both the maple and the pecan. Despite the constant flow of new and retired drinks, some items stick with us. So in honor of our favorite coffee chain and its dynamic menu, we've rounded up the best and worst discontinued drinks that we'll never drink again, for better or worse.

Have you ever had an irresistible urge to put salt in your coffee? Nope. Neither have we. But Starbucks apparently thought it would be a winning combination. Its Nitro Cold Brew with Salted Honey Cold Foam hit menus in 2020 (as if the year hadn't had enough unpleasant surprises) alongside the returning Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew. The latter drink remains a sumptuously smooth affair that served to show just how uncalled for the new salt-and-honey concoction was.

Customers took to social media to voice their irritation over the new beverage, and as is so often the case, they did not pull their punches. "Honey and salt don't really go well together," said one Reddit user, "The pumpkin one was 10x better." "Tried it yesterday, almost threw up," reported another. "This drink is trash," said a third, "especially the topping." 

Made with salted honey cold foam and a toasted honey topping, it tasted like someone had mixed up the jars and added salt instead of sugar, only to over-compensate with an alarming amount of sugar afterward. Redditors described the flavor as "soapy and metallic" and "like sea water." Whichever side you fall on, it's pretty clear the drink was not a hit. The deafening silence that followed its discontinuation probably surprised no one.

A lot of us have fond memories of going to state fairs and amusement parks as children. There were carnival rides, cotton candy, corndogs, and stuffed animal prizes — all the things that thrill a seven-year-old but might not be quite as appealing to an adult. There was probably funnel cake too, but you might not remember that simply because, well, why would you? The rubbery mass of fried dough is greasy in all the wrong ways and doesn't hold a candle to other carnival delicacies like caramel apples and deep-fried Snickers.

It seemed that Starbucks had run out of ideas when, in 2021, it released the Strawberry Funnel Cake Frappuccino, a drink so sickly sweet you might as well have been chugging corn syrup. It was made of funnel cake-flavored syrup mixed with coffee, milk, and ice, layered with strawberry puree, whipped cream, and powdered sugar funnel cake pieces. A 16-ounce grande serving contained a whopping 51 grams of sugar without so much as a hint of citrus to take the edge off.

Customers on Reddit were not kind. They compared it to cough syrup and a blended Nutrigrain bar, and one even suggested that its slightly bitter flavor might have been a deliberate attempt to imitate the rancid taste of fryer oil that so often accompanies funnel cake. This charitable interpretation of the company's creative process still implies that Starbucks was trying to make an unappetizing drink. Mission accomplished.

In 2018, just in time for the holidays, Starbucks finally answered its customers' prayers by introducing a drink that tasted like a tree. If you've ever sniffed a Christmas tree and thought, "I'd love to eat that," the Juniper Latte was for you. At least until you tasted it, probably. The concept was a festive, wintery beverage boasting a hint of juniper and sage with "an evergreen aroma and citrus notes." In reality, it was a regular latte mixed with juniper syrup and topped with foam and pine-citrus sugar. Though it did smell pleasantly like a Christmas tree, it didn't necessarily get your mouth watering — in the same way that smelling a lavender candle probably doesn't make you scamper off to the kitchen.

Juniper is an evergreen tree that produces berries with the distinctive taste of gin. "Aha!" you might be thinking. "So it did taste edible!" Well, only if you consider a gin-flavored latte remotely palatable, which many Starbucks customers did not. "It tastes like sweet windex," said one Reddit user, while someone on X, the company formerly known as Twitter, reported that a barista had warned them that it tasted "like grass and dirt." Starbucks got the message. Its great tree experiment withered away, never to return.

Starbucks often tries to model its Frappuccinos off of beloved foods. There was the Lemon Bar Frappuccino and the Tiramisu Frappuccino, for example, drinks that if nothing else, tried to recreate desserts that most people love. But sometimes the company goes off script, providing drinks that are reminiscent of foods that are, shall we say, an acquired taste. The Strawberry Funnel Cake Frappuccino comes to mind. But no drink was quite as baffling as the Fruitcake Frappuccino, a menu item that seemed destined to fail even before it was sold to the first customer. Made with a decent enough base of a Hazelnut Crème Frappuccino, it included dried fruit, cinnamon, whipped cream, dots of caramel, and a sprinkling of matcha for an unappetizing mold-like coating.

Customers were having none of it. "Fruit cake is literally the worst and no part of me wants to try a frozen, blended form of it," said one Reddit user. Baristas on the platform commiserated with each other about the painstaking process of adding the dots of caramel, while customers expressed general confusion about why the drink existed in the first place. Starbucks attempted to be in on the joke by providing each Fruitcake Frappuccino with an ugly sweater cozy, but it ended up being the drink's only redeeming quality.

Mazagran managed to be simultaneously ahead of its time and more than a hundred years too late. It was essentially coffee soda, a cold, carbonated drink manufactured in collaboration with the Pepsi-Cola Company in the early '90s. It was too refreshing to satisfy morning coffee drinkers and too caffeinated to satisfy anyone looking for a thirst-quencher on a hot summer afternoon. It drummed up publicity and some curious customers but ultimately had few repeat buyers. 

Despite being a novelty in the '90s, however, Mazagran wasn't as out there as it might have seemed. It was based on and even named after a beverage created by the French during their occupation of Algeria in the 1830s. During an Algerian revolt that was quickly quashed, about a hundred French soldiers were held captive in a fortress in the town of Mazagran, where they were forced to substitute their usual coffee and brandy mixture with coffee and cold water. For some reason, the recipe stuck even after they were rescued.

In Europe, it's served with a twist of lemon and even a shot of liquor, but Starbucks customers had no such luck. It was made with carbonated water, coffee, high fructose corn syrup, and natural flavors, and lacked the pizazz that one would require from such an unusual concept. Luckily for Starbucks, its next collaboration with Pepsi went on to greater success. Released in 1996, the bottled Frappuccino quickly overshadowed the embarrassing misstep of Mazagran.

You'd think that Starbucks would have learned a lesson about combining incongruous beverages when Mazagran crashed and burned in the '90s, but the company decided to take another swing at it in 2014 with a beverage that was created to taste like beer and coffee. The Dark Barrel Latte was made with a syrup meant to mimic the flavor of stout beer, which is known for its dark color and often sweet flavor. But no amount of sweetness or even the whipped cream and caramel syrup topping could compensate for the fact that beer and coffee do not play well together. Starbucks succeeded in mimicking the flavor of Guinness, but unfortunately, that was not a good thing.

"It's coffee or beer, not coffee and beer," commented one Reddit user. "Out of all the good liqueurs and whiskeys that pair with coffee, they went 'Stale Guinness.'" On X, then known as Twitter, another customer wrote, "Severely disappointed in @Starbucks. The Dark Barrel Latte is horrid. Bring back my Salted Caramel Latte to Ohio, PLEASE."