Happy Hour (or 'Frappy Hour') is that one glorious week in May when, between 3pm and 5pm, all Starbucks frappuccinos are half-price. Great! You can get a nice cool drink to freshen you up! The only problem is that everyone else has the same idea.
If you've not experienced the joy of a university-campus Starbucks during Happy Hour, just picture: a queue snaking out the door, a scrum of people building up at the end of the counter, stressed and hot staff, constant confusion regarding which drink belongs to who, an ever-depleting supply of straws, and more frappuccinos than you care to count. If you're in a rush to be somewhere - forget it. You'll be in there for a good 20 minutes.
It's the staff I feel bad for; I've worked my fair share of retail jobs (and still do) so know full too well how awful busy periods can be - not to mention how dull it must be, having to make the same drink straight for 2 hours. I wouldn't have actually ventured into Starbucks, had I not really, really wanted to try the new 'Banana Caramel S'mores Frappuccino'. I LOVE banana, and coffee, and caramel - so I had to face Happy Hour.
Anyway, according to Starbucks, the frappuccino is: "coffee, milk and ice with marshmallow, banana compote and caramel, topped with marshmallowy whipped cream and graham cracker." You can also get a Chocolate Marshmallow S'mores frappuccino, which replaces the banana and caramel with chocolate sauce. If you're not a coffee fan, the frappuccinos can be made with cream instead.
I got mine with coffee which, whilst nice, perhaps isn't the greatest flavour to pair with banana! Still, I really enjoyed the drink - the banana flavour was nice and sweet but surprisingly not too artificial, which was a nice surprise. The coffee was strong but not overly so. I don't know what they've done to the cream, but it's certainly lighter and fluffier than normal cream - so yes, similar to marshmallow! The crumb on top was a nice decorative touch but didn't really add anything flavour-wise. My only disappointment was that there wasn't nearly enough caramel - but I'm perhaps going to put that down to the sheer madness of Happy Hour (I think it might have been forgotten).
Overall, a delicious drink and I think I'll certainly be braving Starbucks again to give it another go! I give it a 7 out of 10 and it would be higher if I'd had some caramel.
NB: fair play to the staff who were on shift when I made my visit - they were all working as quickly as they could and were still managing to smile and be friendly. They must hate Happy Hour.
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