8 Starbucks Drink Orders That Take The Longest To Make, According To A Former Barista

Some of us go to Starbucks for a quick pick-me-up. Maybe it's your favorite part of your morning ritual, or a treat reserved for special occasions. Others of us rely on Starbucks for that morning jolt before the office or heading into school. No matter the case, unless you absolutely love sitting around in a Starbucks café, waiting on your order to be ready can be one of the hardest parts.

Your wait can be long for any number of reasons, but one of the easiest explanations is that your drink order simply takes a long time to make. Some drinks need a whole lot of preparation time, while others have a hefty assembly process. No matter the reason, if a store is busy, and certain drinks get ordered, you'll sense a barista's stress start to rise. To help cut down on your wait time; I assembled a list of some of the drink orders that take the longest to make. As a former barista, this is based primarily on my experience behind the bar in a green apron. If you must order one of the drinks below, but are in a rush, do yourself, your baristas, and fellow customers a favor and order on the app to allow for plenty of time.

When I worked at Starbucks, the tea lattes were some of the least commonly ordered drinks. And honestly, it was probably a good thing because these drinks tend to take an awfully long time to make, especially the iced versions. Although I've noticed the Iced London Fog Latte gaining a fair amount of popularity the last few years, it always comes with the caveat that you'll definitely want to mobile order in advance to give the barista enough time without you waiting at the end of the counter to prepare it.

The reason this tea latte takes so long is because the barista has to fully steep the Earl Grey hot tea bag before doing the other parts of the drink. They'll fill part of your cup up with vanilla syrup and hot water and add in necessary earl gray tea bags. If there's a timer available, they'll set a timer for the designated amount of steep time, and place it right near your drink so they don't forget about it. After that steeping time is up, they'll add in your milk and ice. All told, the process can take the better half of seven minutes. Although it doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, if your barista has a lot of drinks lined up, this drink really takes the cake for one of the longest drinks it takes to make.

It might surprise you to learn that your cold brew coffee isn't as simple as pouring ready-made cold brew into your cup. In fact, your drink had been in process about 20 hours before your barista started assembling it. The reason? Cold brew, as the name suggests, is coffee made in cold water.

When Starbucks introduced its cold brew in 2015, the Toddy cold brew system was used to make these drinks; since then, this isn't necessarily the brewer stores use anymore, but the process is basically the same. Just as you would when you make cold brew at home, baristas steep the cold brew coffee grounds in cold water for a lengthy amount of time. After that steeping is done, your cold brew is mostly ready to use. By the time your barista shuffles your cold brew to you at the end of the bar, the drink has already been in the works for nearly a day.

To understand how long it takes to prepare a cold brew, I encourage you to try making cold brew at home. When you do, you'll see just how long cold brew coffee takes to prepare. One of the easier ways to make cold brew right at home is to use a French press. To do this, you'll put your coarsely ground coffee in your French press, add the cold water to the top, assemble the French press, including the mesh filter, and put it in your refrigerator. Leave that in your fridge at least overnight, longer if you want a really deep flavor.

It's no secret that Starbucks has done some significant scaling back, fundamentally changing its menu in 2025, both in the app and on store menu. One of the most impacted menus was the Frappuccino. This drink category got significantly scaled back in its offerings, with many cream Frappuccinos seeming to disappear altogether. The ingredients are still in store, but it's not as easy as clicking a button to order the drink. In any case, regardless of which Frappuccino you order, all of them take some time in the blender, which could mean a pretty long wait, especially if it's a warm day with lots of Frappuccinos ahead of you in line.

Some Frappuccinos, though, are much more time-intensive. Anytime you see a layered Frappuccino that seems to have different colors at the bottom versus the top of the drink, your barista will need to spend extra time achieving that layered effect. For some drinks, like the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, the layering happens using whipped cream and sauce so those layers aren't difficult to achieve, but they do require time. For this one in particular, your barista begins with a layer of whipped cream at the bottom of your cup, followed by sauce, blended drink, and a topping of whipped cream, sauce, and crunch topping.

I have ordered my fair share of secret menu drinks, and inevitably, these drinks just take longer than drinks you simply order off the menu. The reason they take so long is because the time to order them typically requires more explanation, and baristas need to spend the time understanding how your drink is different from the typical offering so that they can make it correctly. This might mean more time in conversation with you, or staring at a drink label to understand the process they should go through in order to make the drink.

When baristas are trained to make drinks, they are taught the various recipes and drink configurations to make drink preparation efficient. For instance, based on the size of the drink, and whether it is hot or iced, baristas know how many sauce or syrup pumps to add, the number of espresso shots each drink would need, and the size of iced scoop to utilize. When you order a secret menu drink, you inevitably throw a wrench in this process. Even if it's simply swapping out a different syrup, for many baristas, drink preparation is largely muscle memory. Making this change requires them to reach for a different syrup and some additional processing time. In short, if you order secret menu drinks, be ready to wait a few extra moments than you would for a simple iced mocha.

For something so delicious as cold foam; you might imagine that the recipe is deeply involved. Thankfully, when baristas make Starbucks cold foam, they aren't following too complicated of a recipe. However, like Frappuccinos, cold foam needs time in the blender. So any drink with cold foam on it is going to require a little extra time.

Starbucks whips up its famous cold foam using a blender of nonfat milk and flavoring. Many locations have smaller blenders ideal for making cold foam that are highly transportable, save time and use batteries so they're easy to bring anywhere behind the bar. Though these blenders are handy and easy to move around, they still require time, like your traditional blender, but at least the barista doesn't have to tie up the blenders each time they go to make cold foam.

If you want to make a delicious cold foam at home, one of the easiest ways is to use coffee creamer. The simple trick to making two-ingredient salted cream caramel cold foam is to froth up Starbucks at-home creamers. The caramel macchiato coffee creamer and a touch of salt, makes a pretty delicious imitation of the in-store salted caramel cream cold foam.

Like regular cold brew, nitro cold brew begins in a 20-hour steep process. Right off the bat, your drink is taking a long time to prepare, well before your barista even pours it from the nitro tap.

Your nitro cold brew is poured through a nitro spigot connected to the refrigerator. Inside this refrigerator, the barista has added the cold brew, and through the spigot, nitrogen is infused right into the coffee. The result is a cascading effect of different hues of brown and tan, making your coffee look like a giant espresso cup, complete with a little foam on top. It's a sight to behold, and definitely one you'll want to watch. The reason this one can take a little extra time is because the nitrogen spout only pours so fast. The coffee will come out at a steady rate, but it is rather slow. While Starbucks baristas are used to pouring fast from jugs of milk and pitchers, the spigot is just slow. You might even find that the barista sets the nitro spigot to pour and does something else while it does its thing.

Caramel macchiatos, like layered Frappuccinos, takes some time to prepare because of the order necessary for the ingredients. In both hot and iced versions, the drink starts with a few pumps of vanilla syrup at the bottom of the cup. For a hot version, you'll pour steamed milk over the syrup; for an iced caramel macchiato, you'll pour cold milk right on top. Following that, iced macchiatos get, well, ice, while the hot caramel macchiato goes right into espresso shots. Those espresso shots either go over the ice layer in a cold drink or the foam milk in the hotter version. The finishing touch is a drizzling of caramel sauce.

Comparing this to a simple iced or hot latte, you have the added order of ingredients, as well as the drizzling of caramel sauce. Unlike a small drizzle of sauce, this should be a very thorough back-and-forth, crosshatch design, creating a whole layer of caramel. While it's super fun to do, and one of my favorite accents on a drink, it no doubt requires extra time. Not to mention, since the drink is so layered, in my opinion, it doesn't become enjoyable until a few minutes after making it. As a result, you'll need to wait even longer for the pieces to come together.

If you're bringing coffee for a crowd, say for a breakfast before moving or for an early morning meeting in the office, one of the best ways to put some smiles on people's faces is to offer coffee. Starbucks offers coffee travelers. This is a full batch of coffee in your choice of roast with cups and sugars, ready to go.

The reason a coffee traveler takes so much time is because you'll need to wait for an entire batch of coffee to brew. While the coffee is brewing, your barista will gather the supplies needed for the rest of the experience. It comes with 12 short cups, sugars, and stir sticks. You'll also get a grande cup filled with half-and-half so that you even have creamer available.

The best way to ensure your barista has more than enough time to prepare your coffee traveler is to order it in advance on the app. Otherwise, you're going to be hanging out and waiting for your coffee to be done for quite some time. If you arrive at the store, and it's already a bustling environment, you'll no doubt need to wait even longer. My advice is to order your coffee traveler for early pick up or for during quiet hours to help cut down on your wait and the stress of your barista.