Your Morning Coffee, in a Bucket

New York Times

7 days ago

Once used to hold paint, mop water or haul home a fresh catch of fish, buckets are increasingly being used for something else entirely. Equipped with straws, the vessels, for some, are replacing the standard to-go cups used for iced coffee and lattes. And they are racking up views on TikTok along the way.
'I drove an hour to a shop because I was like, 'This is going to be trendy,'' said Tiffany Guckin, 37, a director of operations at a research firm and a food content creator based in Guilford, Conn. 'I think millennial moms in particular are looking for something to jazz up their days.'
The only downside? Cup holders. 'It does fit in your glove compartment, if you open it,' she added.
Ms. Guckin is among a growing number of coffee lovers who have decided that a simple 12-ounce drink will not cut it anymore. Some have repurposed Weck jars or old pasta sauce containers. But a handful of cafes are leaning into the absurdity by serving iced coffees and lattes in 34-ounce buckets, often with handles. The trend is drawing a crowd.
Dulce Vida, a Mexican-inspired cafe in Tulsa, Okla., debuted 'La Cubeta,' its 34-ounce version of a latte, last month after the trend gained traction on social media. Tiffany Rodriguez, the cafe's founder, quickly embraced it as a way to differentiate from corporate giants like Starbucks and Dunkin'.
'We like to bring new ideas that you can't find at other coffee shops,' she said. 'So when I saw the bucket trend, it definitely, you know, fit into our overall goal and aesthetic for the shop.'
La Cubeta has four shots of espresso and will set a customer back $12. The price jumps by $2 if you want special flavors such as dulce de leche. Drinks of this size now make up more than 30 percent of orders at Dulce Vida, Ms. Rodriguez said.
Other indie shops are following suit. Wicked Southern Coffee, a roadside window near Gardner State Park in Salem, Conn., is pulling long lines of visitors eager to try its version.
'The demand has been crazy,' said the shop's owner, Kaylee Shilosky. 'We're actually in our growing pains right now. We're just getting busier as each day goes on.'
She recalled a woman from New Hampshire calling to ask whether they'd still have buckets available that weekend, when she was planning to drive down. Ms. Shilosky, who currently employs a team of three, said she expected to 'hire very, very shortly' to keep pace with demand.
For smaller businesses, it's a low-lift way to tap into something viral. In Imperial, Mo., Brittany and Chris Stier run a coffee cart, Noctua Coffee, that offers oversize lattes, but they did not have to introduce new flavors or add any trimmings in order to summon crowds to their stand at their local farmers market.
The larger size also encourages splitting a drink with a friend, Ms. Stier said. 'We really believe in community and connection and so if this is something that connects two people to share a coffee over, like, we want to keep that on our menu,' she added.
Andrea Hernández, a cultural commentator and the writer of Snaxshot, a newsletter on food trends, said that the trend played well on social media but that it also reflected a broader shift in attitudes toward caffeine.
'We're kind of experiencing that sort of backlash from what we were trying to do, like, less caffeine, more mindfulness, more meditation, less palpitations,' Ms. Hernández said. She noted that in the 2010s, adaptogenic coffee and ashwagandha blends aimed to slow people down. In her opinion, consumers have become skeptical of wellness hype and are leaning hard in the opposite direction.
Still, for some, it's more about the novelty than the buzz.
Aileen Gonzalez, 24, an accountant based in Placentia, Calif., recently drove through an hour of traffic with her sister and nephew to reach a woman's house in West Covina after spotting her bucket coffee business on Instagram.
'It's just to do something new, something that we haven't seen,' she said, adding that the aesthetic of a big coffee bucket, more than the flavor, was what drew her in.
She drank the whole thing on the way home.