Why We Think Every Takeaway Coffee Should Come With a Double Shot
This might divide a few people in the coffee industry, but if we're ordering an 8 oz or a 12 oz takeaway coffee, we think it should come with a double shot as standard.
Notice we said we think.
There are plenty of fantastic cafes that do things differently, and there isn't one universal recipe that every coffee professional agrees on. Espresso recipes vary depending on the coffee, the roast profile, the basket size, the milk, the machine and ultimately the experience you're trying to create.
But after years of roasting coffee, running cafes and working alongside other cafe owners, we've become convinced that for most takeaway milk coffees between 8 oz and 12 oz, a double shot simply makes the most sense.
Let's start with the flavour.
We think we can all agree on one thing.
Nobody wants to pay for a cup of hot milk.
When you pour a single shot of espresso into an 8 oz takeaway cup, the coffee has to compete against roughly 200 mL of textured milk. In our opinion, that's asking too much of the espresso. The sweetness and complexity that you've spent so much time trying to create through sourcing, roasting and dialling in can disappear surprisingly quickly.
A double shot gives the coffee enough strength to stand its ground. You still have a smooth milk drink, but you can taste the coffee. The chocolate notes, the caramel sweetness or the fruit characteristics haven't been completely diluted by the milk.
That's the experience most customers think they're paying for.
There's another reason that has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with workflow.
Most modern cafes are already extracting double shots.
Whether you're using an 18-gram basket, a 20-gram basket or something larger, you're generally pulling enough espresso for two single shots at once. If your standard 8 oz drink only uses one of those shots, you've immediately created another decision. Can the second half be used? Will another small coffee come through in time? Or does it end up down the sink?
Sometimes it works out perfectly.
Often it doesn't.
Building your menu around double shots dramatically reduces that waste because every extraction has a purpose.
It also makes training much simpler.
One recipe.
One button.
One standard.
When a new barista joins your team, they aren't trying to remember whether the flat white gets one shot, the latte gets one and a half, the cappuccino gets two, or whether the customer asked for a particular size. Consistency becomes much easier because the system is simpler.
As management expert W. Edwards Deming argued throughout his work on quality systems, variation is one of the greatest enemies of consistency. Every unnecessary decision increases the opportunity for mistakes. Simplifying a process doesn't just make people faster - it usually makes the end product better as well.
"But what about the 12 oz?"
This is normally where people push back.
If an 8 oz gets a double shot, surely a 12 oz should get three?
Personally, we don't think so.
Yes, a 12 oz milk coffee is naturally going to taste a little lighter because there's more milk. But we don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Customers ordering a larger drink are usually choosing it because they enjoy drinking more coffee over a longer period, not because they're chasing the strongest beverage possible.
More importantly, adding a third shot introduces a new problem.
To pull three shots, most cafes need to extract another double shot, use one of them and then either waste or find a home for the remaining shot. Suddenly your coffee costs increase, your workflow becomes slower and your waste goes up, all for a relatively small difference in the cup.
From a business perspective, it becomes difficult to justify.
From a workflow perspective, it complicates what was previously simple.
Could you make an argument for three shots?
Absolutely.
There are cafes doing exactly that, and they're producing excellent coffee.
We just don't think it's the best trade-off for most businesses.
If we were looking to refine the 8 oz even further, we'd probably experiment with a double ristretto instead of a standard double espresso. Restricting the yield slightly often creates a sweeter, heavier and more concentrated coffee that pairs beautifully with milk without increasing the amount of coffee you're using. It does require another programmed button on the machine and another recipe for the team to learn, so whether that's worthwhile depends entirely on the cafe.
At the end of the day, every recipe is a compromise between flavour, workflow, consistency and cost.
For us, the humble double shot sits right in the middle of that balance.
It gives customers a coffee they can still taste, reduces unnecessary waste, simplifies training, speeds up service and creates consistency across the team.
Sometimes the best recipe isn't the most complicated one.
It's the one your team can execute brilliantly, hundreds of times a day.
