The “-Ber” months are officially upon us. We can no longer escape the fact that, although there are still technically three weeks left of summer, fall and all of its many “isms” and products are now in play. This means that the world’s most well-known fall flavor, pumpkin spice, is about to fully launch.
While there are now many different pumpkin spice products out there, it actually could have gone a bit differently. The product that allegedly kicked it all off, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL), almost wasn’t a thing. People just did an interview with Peter Dukes, who is known as the “father” of the PSL. They talked about how the PSL came about. According to Daddy PSL, pumpkin wasn’t a popular flavor the year that the drink was introduced, and Starbucks almost called PSLs “Fall Harvest Lattes.”
“We started to brainstorm different ideas that would resonate in the fall seasonal time period. We came up with hundreds of ideas,” he says, noting that there “were chocolate beverages and caramel beverages” also in the mix. “[We] quickly whittled down to 10 concepts that we wanted to bring forward to our customers with some paper concepts.”
They had an in-depth proposal — which featured a hand-drawn diagram of the beverage and an explanation of the drink’s flavor profile — for all 10 concepts they wanted to bring to market research. They asked the customers two main questions: How unique is this beverage and how likely are you to buy it? When they got back the results, the drinks featuring chocolate and caramel had scored the highest. In contrast, the pumpkin beverage scored the lowest in terms of customer interest, but nearly everyone agreed that it was unique. “This idea of pumpkin was rated as unique. What you need to keep in mind is that we’re going back to 2003,” Dukes explains. “The only thing pumpkin you would find in the marketplace was the pumpkin puree cans in the grocery store that people would use to make pumpkin pies.”
When the development team collaborated with the food scientists, they decided to move forward with four beverages: a chocolate-based one, a caramel beverage, and a cinnamon beverage. Despite mixed reviews, Dukes and the team felt strongly about the pumpkin beverage, and after a lengthy debate, it was approved as the fourth option. “One of the first things we did was we decorated the lab as if it were fall, even though it was springtime. We brought in leaves, pumpkins and anything else that would evoke a fall mindset,” Dukes recalls. “Then we brought in pumpkin pies. We took a bite of the pumpkin pie, mixed it with espresso in a sample cup and ate it.”
After the initial taste test, they spent a long time perfecting the recipe. Once they had the flavor down, they also had to come up with a name for the festive beverage that didn’t scare people away. Dukes admits that they were originally planning to call it the “Fall Harvest Latte,” but later landed on the PSL. “After discussions, we thought it was important that we were very clear and direct with our customers about what to expect when they taste it, because we knew that a potential hurdle was getting customers to try it,” he explains.
The spices played a crucial role: cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Adding the spice in that descriptor of the name was an important part of the development for the Pumpkin Spice Latte,” he adds.
“Nobody knew it was gonna become what it has become for sure. We were excited to have a beverage that our customers really liked,” Dukes says. When it launched, the drink was popular, but it didn’t gain the widespread recognition it has today until it gained traction on social media. According to Starbucks, in 2014, the Pumpkin Spice Latte joined Twitter (now X) with a dedicated account called @TheRealPSL. During peak pumpkin season, more than 3,000 tweets per day include the #PSL hashtag.
What’s in a name? “Fall Harvest” just doesn’t have the same feel or ring to it. It probably also helps that the PSL flavor is actually really good. I’m not a huge pumpkin-flavored fan, but I will occasionally f-ck with a PSL, both hot and iced. I like the taste in moderation, but they really do add a lot of sugar into that puppy. On that note, I love the pumpkin-spice smell, and will hit up T.J. Max or Kohl’s every fall in order to find a good candle to burn. While I’m okay with pumpkin spice as a candle scent, I do not like it in my cream cheese or yogurt. That said, I hope that whoever came up with the name “Pumpkin Spice Latte” has it on their LinkedIn, Facebook, Tinder/Grindr, etc. profile. That was literally a billion-dollar idea right there.
