So recently I was at Singapore Airport – the best airport in the entire Universe – and given it was an ungodly hour and I was up, I needed a coffee to survive.
Spotting a Costa Coffee, I popped over to grab myself a cup of hot coffee flavoured liquid, but before I ordered, I spotted this:
Can you see it?
It’s the names … Medio and Massimo.
Unsurprisingly, medio is Italian for medium but massimo isn’t Italian large … oh no, … massimo is Italian for maximum.
MAXIMUM!
As in ‘no more can be physically poured or consumed’.
Though I bet $100 that within a few years, when they realise that ‘portion inflation’ has made their current biggest sized coffee a small size in the future, they’ll launch the ‘Grande Massimo’ to get back in line with the competition … especially Macca’s whose current small cup used to allegedly be their large size 15 year ago.
But that’s not what is bothering me – though it should [and it’s something I’d be getting diet companies, like Jenny Craig, should be fighting against if they really care about helping their customers lose weight] – it’s the fact Costa bloody Coffee is an English brand.
ENGLISH!
They’re about as Italian as a can of Heinz spaghetti bolognese and yet there they are, playing the mighty Italian card when they are absolutely nothing of the sort.
The other way of looking at it is Costa Coffee are liars and thieves.
Yes, liars and thieves … pretending to come from a nation that is renowned for their love of coffee so they can steal SG$14 of your money for a crappy latte and a small lemon muffin.
Yes, SG$14 … or about £7 in real money, a bloody disgrace.
Why a competitor brand hasn’t called them on this is anyones guess – probably because they’re as complicit in this coffee nation bullshit as the rest of them – but before anyone thinks I’m being too hard on them, you can relax knowing they got their own back by calling the Police when I accidentally left my bag at the cafe and walked off … only for me to return in a panic 45 minutes later [I told you I was tired] and found the place had been cornered off and there were 15 officials from various official departments going through my bag.
The smug look on the barista’s face as I was taken away for an hours questioning was priceless, almost as priceless as the cops face when he saw my passport and realised I was wearing exactly the same clothes as I am in my passport photo, despite that being 3 years old.
