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business ahead. Betweenbites, they discussed the question that brought them here: What does an espresso version of fall’s most seasonal dessert taste like? They forked chunks of filling into their mouths and debated which elements were most appealing with coffee. The pumpkin? The cinnamon? Everyone sipped espresso alongside each forkful; a few even poured shots over their slices to approximate how it might play with pumpkin pie’s texture.
    Based on customer surveys and traditional corporate metrics, the bizarre, pumpkin-fueled conclave unfolding here should have never happened. But from it emerged one of the most successful, if sometimes ridiculed, rollouts in Seattle coffee history.
    Since the pumpkin spice latte’s inception 11 years ago, customers have ordered more than 200 million, each topped with whipped cream and a parting shake of spices. It arrives while the summer sun still beats down hot over most of the country, but a combination of masterful marketing and a fan base with the kind of obsession usually reserved for pop stars has transformed this drink into a national harbinger of fall.
    Fans paint tiny Starbucks cups on their nails. They dress their dogs up in latte costumes for Halloween (pug-kin spice latte—get it?). They post online comments like, “Can it be fall now? I am so ready for Pumpkin Spice Latte, pants, warm sweaters & lots of cuddles.” The morning after the first presidential debate of 2012, the nation was talking in nearly equal measures about Obama’s curiously detached performance and a front-page Wall Street Journal article about a temporary shortage of pumpkin spice lattes after an early-season rush.
    Plenty of others hate it. Their online comments are more in the vein of “tastes like candle wax” or “How do you make a pumpkin spice latte? Put yoga pants, Ugg boots, a hoodie, an iPhone 5, and a white girl into a blender.” But if you partake in any form of social media whatsoever, it’s nigh impossible to ignore the drink’s return each year. (The Starbucks media team tracks 3,000 tweets a day when the hot beverage reemerges from hibernation, usually around Labor Day.)
    Like any larger-than-life figure, the pumpkin spice latte has an origin story. It has also developed a folk hero in Peter Dukes, a lanky former all-metro point guard for the Roosevelt High School basketball team, with long eyelashes, an almost bashful grin, and a sense of humor about his role as the beverage’s unofficial mascot. He even totes a Styrofoam pumpkin to media interviews to set the mood.
    Back in early 2003 he was a product manager in the company’s espresso division. In those days Starbucks’ handful of seasonal drinks were clustered around Christmas. The brand new peppermint mocha had performed well, and company higher-ups told Dukes they wanted a similarly successful drink for the fall season.
    His team compiled a list of about 20 potential flavors. Most were some variation of chocolate or caramel, but a conversation about the tastes of fall can’t get too far before someone brings up Thanksgiving’s signature dessert. So Dukes threw the idea of a pumpkin pie latte in the mix. Not that the idea of combining pumpkin pie spices with lattes descended directly from the heavens down to Starbucks headquarters—places like J.L. Hufford Coffee and Tea Company in Lafayette, Indiana, already had one on the menu—but it was definitely unexplored territory in the world of branded espresso drinks.
    An online survey invited customers to select the theoretical latte that sounded the most appealing. The results: Starbucks regulars overwhelmingly preferred ushering in autumn with those familiar chocolate or caramel flavors. The pumpkin pie latte fell flat in the survey.
    Well, “fell flat” is a little harsh. “Near the bottom middle,” Dukes recalls. It should have died there. But something about the idea stirred his imagination.