UC Santa Barbara Cafes adjusted their iced coffee recipe at the beginning of the Fall quarter to include cane sugar and branded it under the name, “Gaucho iced coffee.”
According to UCSB Food Services, the reasoning behind the change was to create an elevated cup of coffee.
“The campus has always done an iced coffee. The iced coffee is basically a drip coffee that is refrigerated and then served over ice. And sometimes it can be fairly weak and almost, you know, almost tastes like a watered-down coffee. So we wanted to upscale that and create something that we can call the Gaucho coffee, which is a little bit of a higher formula,” Ken Thompon, assistant director for retail dining said.
But for some customers on campus, the switch is not a positive one.
“We actually did a tally mark, just for our own feedback. It was, like, how many of our customers liked it, and I think it ended up being like, for just like one day, it was like fifteen to one for people who didn’t like it and people who did like it,” Aleeza Sanchez said, student manager at Buchanan cafe.
According to Thompson, there is still a way for students to evade this new coffee on campus.
“If somebody wanted to order something more similar to the old iced coffee, we can always make them an Americano, which is basically an espresso with added water and ice that’ll have much of a similar taste. It’ll be a little bit stronger, but much of a similar taste to the old iced coffee,” he said.
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