Travel Cups Not Suitable For Travel

So on a recent long trip back home down the M1, we had to make the obligatory services stop. They joys of service stations would make another great blog post, but this is not the place for observations on some of the eclectic visitors there. 

No, this blog is about how it was late evening and it’d been a long day, so coffee was required. 

Now these particular services had a Costa Coffee franchise, but I’ve been to others with Starbucks, and for the purposes of this blog, the two are interchangeable. We don’t need to be pedantic and differentiate here. 

Of course, first up, you have to take a big gulp and swallow the prices. Luxury convenience coffee prices are extortionate at the best of times, but at a service station, they’re almost indigestible. £3 for a standard cup of coffee is just incredible, but, we live in a free market economy and people are willing to pay that price. At the service station, there’s less competition, and demand is greater, which therefore, hurts my pocket even more than usual. 

But when you need some caffeine for the journey, it’s the price you have to pay. 

I bought it of course, and then I would’ve liked to start drinking it then and there, but there was a slight problem. Too damn hot. Obviously, coffee should be hot and not luke warm, and you can’t argue with the fact that you’re warned numerous times by the cup you’re sipping from, that this beverage you’re about to drink is hot. But there’s hot, and there’s hot. This coffee was scorching. I added some milk to try and cool it down, but no such luck. 

So it was that I had to carry a full cup of coffee back to the car with me.  

I’d like to rant here about how the cups never fit in the cup holder in my car, but I think this is more of a design flaw with Pedro the Punto. Underneath the radio means that you can’t really have anything taller than a can in there, and even then, it’s a snug fit. So coffee cups don’t fit there.  

That means either burdening the passenger next to you with holding a cup, and serving it to you when you require, or balancing it between your legs. Kirsty doesn't take well to being my slave, and she’s often asleep anyway! Therefore, it’s option number 2.

There’s only one problem with option 2, and it’s a pretty big one. The dreaded groin burn!

I’d tried to drink as much as I could of the coffee in order to reduce the spillage possibility, but as I said, the coffee was damn hot, and I didn’t really fancy burning the taste buds off my tongue. 

So as we set off back down the M1, I was in a pretty precarious situation.  

I’d got a good grip on the cup, so it definitely wasn’t going anywhere. But here’s where the problem is, and where this post is heading to: The lids on travel cups are absolutely useless. Seriously, I always thought those plastic cups must have been designed with a mind to the traveller who wants it for a take out. You know, to prevent spillage.  

But they don’t work.  

OK, so maybe they’re better than just an open cup, with the coffee sloshing around everywhere, but I think with all the money in Starbucks and Costa, they’d be able to direct their research teams to come up with a better solution. Because as it stands, their lids don’t form any kind of cover on your coffee. There’s still an open hole for it to come streaming through. So not only are you faced with a small hole to drink from when you want some (and a hole which you can’t blow through to cool your coffee down), but when you don’t want to drink, there’s no way of closing anything.  

And with that hole at the top, if you do go over a small bump in the road, your coffee goes up a bit, all the liquid jumps up to hit the roof of the lid, and everything is funnelled up to the drinking hole. And out it spurts up into the air, and over anything nearby. Notably, my hand, shirt, and groin.  

It happened when my cup was in the holder, in my lap, and in my hand. It’s happened when I’ve been walking with a cup in my hand, and I’ve taken too vigorous a step. And it’s happened when I’ve set a cup down on the table a little too enthusiastically.  

Basically, it’s a lid that’s not suitable for travel. And since it’s an expensive coffee which is nevertheless very nice, I’d prefer to enjoy every last bit of it. My clothes don’t appreciate it as much as my mouth does. 

Come on Starbucks and Costa. Sort it out!