A recent shortage of Pumpkin Spice Sauce has left many Starbucks followers with no last resort. The sauce, along with espresso and milk, comprises Starbucks’ famous signature drink, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Although it’s only available for a limited time, the drink is insanely popular, particularly with younger generations that plague various social media sites with photos of the cliched beverage that has become a cultural staple. The “PSL” as it is often affectionately nicknamed, spelled the doom of baristas’ blood pressure worldwide when it and its seasonal line of pumpkin-themed terror returned on September 5th.
Starting at first as a rumor of sorts, more stores across the Midwest were reportedly “running out” of the sauce. It was thought to be an elaborate hoax at first, devised by Starbucks corporate engineers to boost sales of the drink, but as more and more stores reported shortages of the sauce, panic began to take hold in areas of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It wasn’t until just two weeks ago that Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson addressed the semi-national epidemic with an official press release on the company’s Twitter account. In the statement, Johnson declared that the Starbucks factory was working as quickly as it could to provide the quickly growing list of stores with their missing Pumpkin Spice Sauce.
The outage continued to grow outward from the Midwest, now spanning distances that reach from the east coast to Starbucks’ flagship store in downtown Seattle. Over the weekend, riots were reported in various cities across the United States. Stores in both Omaha and St. Louis were surrounded by customers thirsty for their fall fix, chanting “PSL! PSL!” and holding homemade signs expressing their love for the missing drink. Loyal Starbucks patrons are being rushed to emergency rooms everywhere, facing problems such as malnutrition and calcium deficiency. Various events like these have been taking place all over the world and the Pumpkin Spice Scare of 2017 has gone from simply being a shortage to an all-out worldwide phenomenon.
As reports of anarchy and violence on the streets of cities continue to pour in from all corners of the world, many Americans are asking: Why? Why is such a bland and insignificant thing like an artificially made pumpkin-flavored syrup so highly coveted across the world? Pumpkin is literally available for consumption at any time of the year, yet the annual fall rollout is sacred ritual. This reporter and former barista asks, why?
