A pumpkin spice latte with cinnamon sticks. Photo Theo Crazzolara, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).
The Pumpkin Spice Latte
What it took directly
- statedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte took from a bite of pumpkin pie mixed with espresso in a sample cup, in Starbucks' development lab"Then we brought in pumpkin pies. We took a bite of the pumpkin pie, mixed it with espresso in a sample cup and ate it." Peter Dukes, on the original Starbucks team that developed the drink, to PEOPLE (2025)
- statedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte took from a 2003 customer survey that rated the pumpkin idea low on appeal but high on uniqueness"This idea of pumpkin was rated as unique. What you need to keep in mind is that we're going back to 2003" Peter Dukes, to PEOPLE (2025)
- statedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte took from a pumpkin concept the team kept although it was not the natural winner"It wasn’t the natural winner, but there was something there" Peter Dukes, Starbucks' espresso brand manager in 2013, to the Wall Street Journal (Lisa Fleisher, 2013)
- statedThe name "Pumpkin Spice Latte" took from the team's choice to put the spices in the name, instead of "Fall Harvest Latte""The spices played a crucial role: cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Adding the spice in that descriptor of the name was an important part of the development for the Pumpkin Spice Latte" Peter Dukes, to PEOPLE (2025)
- statedThe 2015 recipe change (real pumpkin, no caramel colouring) took from what customers and Starbucks staff ("partners") said about its ingredients"After hearing from customers and partners about ingredients, we took another look at this beverage and why we created it so many years ago." Peter Dukes, on Starbucks' own blog (Aug 17, 2015)
What it learned to do
- documentedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte learned from the seasonal drinks Dukes's team also made, the eggnog latte and the peppermint mocha"the Starbucks employee credited with bringing the idea to the company is Peter Dukes, then the director of espresso, whose team created other seasonal drinks like the eggnog latte and peppermint mocha." Food & Wine (Nina Friend, 2025)
- documentedCommercial pumpkin spice flavouring learned from flavour science: a few compounds standing in for the hundreds in real spices"Pumpkin spice mix contains at least 340 flavor compounds and these are not found in the kitchen cupboard. But the human brain can fill in the blanks, so commercial operators use about 5-10 percent of the natural blend of spices." Kantha Shelke, PhD, food scientist, for the Institute of Food Technologists (2016)
The tradition it sits in
- inferredThe Pumpkin Spice Latte comes from the spice blend, not the squash: there was no pumpkin in it until 2015"But no actual pumpkin in the Pumpkin Spice Latte." inferred — the Wall Street Journal (2013) reports no actual pumpkin in the drink, and Dukes says the spices were put in the name on purpose; neither source frames the latte as descending from the spice blend rather than the pumpkin
- statedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte comes from home-baked pumpkin pie: in 2003, canned purée for pies was the only pumpkin in the shops"The only thing pumpkin you would find in the marketplace was the pumpkin puree cans in the grocery store that people would use to make pumpkin pies." Peter Dukes, to PEOPLE (2025)
- documentedPumpkin spice comes from the ready-mixed Pumpkin Pie Spice that Thompson & Taylor and McCormick put on shelves"in the 1930s, spice manufacturing companies like Thompson & Taylor Spice Co and McCormick & Company came out with a revolutionary product: Pumpkin Pie Spice, a pre-blended mix that meant bakers could buy one spice instead of several." Food & Wine (Nina Friend, 2025), which dates the blends to 1933–34; Scientific American's Krystal D'Costa dates McCormick's "pumpkin spice" to the 1950s instead
- documentedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte comes from the flavoured coffees retailers began experimenting with in the 1990s"And they found their way into coffees beginning in the 1990s as retailers began to experiment with flavored coffees." Krystal D'Costa, anthropologist, Scientific American (2017)
- documentedThe Pumpkin Spice Latte comes from pumpkin lattes small coffee shops were already selling in the early 1990s"Doug Mack's Bluesky thread points out that small coffee shops were selling pumpkin lattes in the early '90s, but Starbucks didn't unveil its own until 2003." Stereogum (Tom Breihan, 2025), reporting Doug Mack's research
- inferredPumpkin-pie coffee comes from home kitchens before it was a product: Tori Amos told a Seattle crowd in 1995 that she had her own"Well, I have one that tastes like pumpkin pie. It's my own invention; it's my contribution to Halloween." inferred — Amos called her pumpkin-pie drink her own invention in a 1995 Seattle show (The Rocket's review, quoted by Stereogum); nothing on record says Starbucks' team knew of it, and Stereogum knows of no claim by Amos to the latte
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedPumpkin spice comes from Amelia Simmons' "pompkin" recipe of milk, molasses, allspice and ginger baked in a crust, in American Cookery (Hartford, 1796)"No. 2. One quart of milk, 1 pint pompkin, 4 eggs, molasses, allspice and ginger in a crust, bake 1 hour." Amelia Simmons, "an American orphan", American Cookery (1796), via Project Gutenberg; the link to pumpkin spice is Food & Wine's
- documentedThe pumpkin in pumpkin spice comes from the pumpkin cooking of American Indians, which the American colonists likely copied"Instead they likely ate pumpkins in the style that American Indians did: They made soups and stews, roasted them, made them into savory sauces, and baked breads and cakes with the fruit." Krystal D'Costa, anthropologist, Scientific American (2017), hedged by her as "likely"
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