Sweet tea may be the “house wine of the South,” but when autumn rolls around in Atlanta it’s time for pumpkin spice lattes.
Sunday marks the official first day of fall, though the seasonal coffee drink has been available at Starbucks since last month.
Starbucks, inventor of the so-called PSL, doles out 20 million cups of the fall flavor each year. And Americans purchased more than $800 million of pumpkin-flavored products over a recent 12 month period, according to Nielsen research.
Only Minneapolis and Miami bested Atlanta when it came to Googling “pumpkin spice lattes” back in 2021. This year, Atlanta has tumbled to No. 93 in Google’s list of U.S. metropolitan areas seeking out PSL info. That’s behind Columbus, which lands at No. 89. Marquette, Michigan, holds the top search spot for pumpkin spice delights.
Google Trends shows Georgia at No. 22 among U.S. states in searches for the popular drink.
The Starbucks creation, which debuted 21 years ago, now has a slew of imitators.
But it was a few years after the drink’s introduction, with the advent of social media platforms, that the latte skyrocketed to its present popularity, according to Starbucks’ Peter Dukes. He led the team that developed the seasonal beverage.
“We launched PSL very well, but then there were discussions about discontinuing it,” Dukes said, in a 2023 company history of the drink. “There was this idea back then of, ‘Hey, we want keep things new, keep things fresh.’ And fortunately, we kept bringing it back.”
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