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Medium Drinks
This is an awkward trend that always fascinated me. Lets bring the term “medium” into discussion for a moment. We’ll look at it in terms of what it may be describing.
Temperature: Not too hot, not too cold.
Steak: Not too rare, not too cooked.
Size: Not too large, not too small.
These definitions suggest that something which is medium would fall somewhere between two extremes. A middle value, if you will. We all basically conform to this rule. Everything does, really. So why have restaurants taken the liberty of ignoring this rule of nature? Marketing, I suspect, but it really upsets me.“How much is a small drink?”
“Well, the medium is $1.50.”
“No, the small.”
“The medium is the small.”
“So what’s the medium size?”
“Large.”I think they briefly tackled this in a Seinfeld episode, but I think my point is valid. Using inaccurate terms to describe sizes is less useful than just resorting to gibberish. Take Starbucks, for example. Tall, grande, and venti don’t suggest anything about the size of the drink, but at least they don’t confuse you (beyond learning the lingo).
What if a restaurant mish-mashed all of its items and not just the sizes? What if they called their drinks “hamburgers?” Try to wrap your mind around that one.
If this was difficult to follow, I apologize, but this is the nature of beverages.
