In 2024, a girl’s girl would never mock another girl’s drink choice. Understanding how we got here is key to uncovering PSL’s revival.

For 20 years, Pumpkin Spice lattes have been a crucial part of autumnal marketing discussions. Why was it (is it?) so popular and how can we ride the coattails of Starbucks’ success? In 2024, calling pumpkin spice a trend is no longer accurate. Rather, it’s a zeitgeist, growing from trend to anti-trend to nostalgic mainstay.

The Pumpkin Spice Cultural U-turn

This year (2025), Starbucks released Pumpkin Spice on August 22, the earliest release to date.

 

 

Since its release in 2003, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has been a popular drink. It’s become so popular that everyone in the business world analyzed the trend. Even more compellingly, the interest in the drink grew year after year for over a decade.

For the most part, the rise was attributed to a perfect storm of likeability and nostalgia. People associate pumpkin spice with the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Pumpkin spice lattes brought that warm, cozy comfort to consumers much earlier than November. At the same time, the flavor was mild and familiar. Even if you don’t love pumpkin spice, it’s not that offensive.

After the 2008 recession, comfort foods began to trend as did tiny luxuries. Pumpkin spice lattes became even more popular, cementing them as a true phenomenon. While consumers were struggling with job loss and market crashes, they were somehow willing to shell out for overpriced coffee. It was an indulgence that defied budgeting advice. Brands dogpiled on that success because it was one of the few marketing successes you could find.

Oversaturation

Around 2014, the PSL reached its saturation point. It wasn’t just coffee shops pushing the flavor. Every food manufacturer from Oreos to Pringles had a product. (Writing an accurate list feels hyperbolic even if I fact-check the items.)

In 2015, Starbucks changed the recipe to include pureed pumpkin, in an effort to shake up consumer interest and label the drink as cleaner. The drink and the flavor continued to rise in popularity for an amazing 10-year-long trend.

Around 2017, the pumpkin spice bubble appeared to burst. While foods were filled with pumpkin spice flavor, the sales weren’t strong.

…five of the top ten pumpkin spice products were related to the relatively classic pumpkin spiced hot drink (coffee, tea, and coffee creamer products). Pumpkin spiced yogurt, sauce, candles, and Cheerios filled out the top ten.- The Pumpkin Spice Craze Is Getting Really Out of Hand, Eater

Pumpkin spice saturation had hit its peak and consumers were sick of it. Culturally, the drink took a turn as well. People began to mock both the capitalistic seasonal creep and deride the consumers who fell for it.

In 2018, I wrote about how the PSL is one of the most brilliant limited-time marketing strategies of all time. It illustrates the perfect formula for re-engaging your customers with your brand right before the holidays.

From the end of August until the New Year, retail consumers move into buying mode. It’s Back to School then, Black Friday, and Christmas. If you are going to capture your customer’s loyalty with limited-time offers now is the time. Start by doing your research (and kick your marketers off of the internet and into the streets).

Get a fresh, risky idea.

Work it hard.

Then, keep the limited-time offers rolling until your next promotion.

The Notorious PSL: How the Pumpkin Spice Latte Became the OG of Limited-Time Offers

Marketers needed that seasonal magic but, pumpkin spice wasn’t the answer anymore. Discourse around the drink, and the flavor had changed from appreciation to disdain, like a top-hit song that becomes maligned from overplaying. If you look at the trends, searches dip between 2017 and 2019, showing an overall decline in interest.

Revival

In 2019, Starbucks released a Pumpkin Cream cold brew, acknowledging that most of America is still pretty warm in August and September. Yett excitement for pumpkin spice remained lower than prior years.

Then in 2022, post-Covid-19 consumer interest in pumpkin spice lattes rebounded. Nostalgia marketing was everywhere and in every market. The 20-year-old drink began to feel like a special journey back to the the early 2000s, when millennials didn’t know of the trials that waited for them in adulthood.

Discourse around pumpkin spice slowly became less snobby. We’re going to dive into the factors behind this u-turn.

One Factor: Seasonal Creep

One of the biggest complaints about the Pumpkin Spice Latte is the seasonal creep surrounding its release. Each year, Starbucks releases it earlier and earlier. At the same time, every other brand pushes out their fall offerings, some as early as July.

While it’s true that consumers shop for fall items beginning in late July and early August. It just feels pushy when everything turns orange before the trees.

While you can argue that this capitalistic push soured the PSL, it’s not the main reason for the temporary turn against the fall flavor. It’s too rooted in our cultural consciousness. In 2018, Vogue asked, Can Anything Stop Pumpkin Spice? In short, no.

Because here’s the thing: pumpkin spice was never really a trend. It’s in a 1631 cookbook. It’s in 1930s newspaper recipes. It was the inspiration for a 19th century horticulturist‘s apple-naming. And if you think about it, most Americans have been ingesting a form of pumpkin spice on Thanksgiving for generations. Elise Taylor, Can Anything Stop Pumpkin Spice?

The root of the backlash is more cultural than commercial.

Basic Bitch Backlash

 

 

Scream Queen’s iconic PSL coffee scene encapsulates the rise and fall of pumpkin spice in a way that was truly ahead of its time. In the first season, the series parodies horror movie tropes while setting up a simple girl-vs-girl scenario. Chanel #1 is the powerful antagonist — a hyperbolic, unlikeable rich girl and the epitome of basic tastes. Grace Gardner is the tongue-in-cheek protagonist — modeled after female audience surrogates like Twilight’s Bella with dollops of chagrin. It’s brilliant because they made her a pick-me girl before that was a thing. Both characters are absurd and mock the misogynist discourse around women and what they like.

Even though the show came out in 2015, the scene remains funny because it turns the ridiculousness back on the viewer. It’s just as performative to disdainfully not order a PSL as it is to gleefully order one.

In 2024, a girl’s girl wouldn’t mock another girl’s drink choice. Understanding how we got here is key to uncovering PSL’s revival.

How Being Basic Meant Loving #PSL

In the early 2010s, uniqueness and originality was queen. Nobody who was chic would have posted about a Target haul. Luxury brands and expensive indie brands had a grip on the cultural consciousness. If you shopped fast fashion, you tried to hide it. SHEIN had no place in that world.

As many aspired to be not-like-other-girls calling another lady basic was the easiest way to put her down.

Let us begin, as we so often do, by acknowledging that the term “basic bitch” has been expertly Columbused by white people. In 1984, the R&B group Klymaxx had a hit Billboard single with “Meeting In The Ladies Room,” where one of the ladies sings about a basic woman who is trying to get up on her man. But rapper Kreayshawn’s 2010 single “Gucci Gucci” is probably the main reason we’re all talking about basic today. The song was a massive hit and the music video went viral, amassing three million views in the first few weeks.

In “Gucci Gucci,” Kreayshawn put her own spin on the expression by changing Klymaxx’s “basic woman” to “basic bitch,” as to better fit the lexicon of 2010. However, the meaning of the term stayed the same here, because Kreayshawn, having grown up in black neighborhoods in Oakland, actually knew what it meant.

– Overanalyzing ‘Basic’ Is the Most Basic Move of All, Jezebel

Around 2014, as the superfluous #psl choked fall feeds, the criticism of basic women who consumed pumpkin spice lattes connected the cultural phenomenons. A quick scroll through Instagram revealed a homogeny of aesthetics that turned many people off.

It seems to me that while what it pretends to criticize is unoriginality of thought and action, most of what basic actually seeks to dismiss is consumption patterns — what you watch, what you drink, what you wear, and what you buy — without dismissing consumption itself. – What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’? from The Cut

This original usage has more to do with posturing and performance, but that doesn’t mean that class isn’t at its root: If you’re pretending to be something you’re not, especially when you don’t have the means to “upgrade,” you’re a basic bitch.- What We’re Really Afraid Of When We Call Someone “Basic”, Buzzfeed

You can see the post in your head, right? It’s a downward shot of a woman’s hand holding a Starbucks cup over her ugg-covered feet. Orange leaves are spread in a perfect circle around her and the filter adds golden-brown tones. It was easy to mock the lack of individuality — we’re Americans. It’s what we do.

But then, women started to question whether it’s bad to like something just because it’s popular. For example, Taylor Swift’s re-recording of Red in 2021 launched a culture-defining conversation about why we criticize things that women like.

The Turning Point

Red (Taylor’s Version) is a very fall album from the cover art to the themes in the music. Swift released it in the fall and even non-fans appreciated the female empowerment move of re-recording her masters wrapped in early 2000s nostalgia. The trend was pretty and reddish-orange — and women decided they were allowed to like it.

And so the woman who calls another woman basic ends up implicitly endorsing two things she probably wouldn’t sign up for if they were spelled out for her: a male hierarchy of culture, and the belief that the self is an essentially surface-level formation. – What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’? from The Cut

It’s crucial to acknowledge that just as “basic bitch” was primarily used by black people, toward black people; the deracinated “basic” is primarily used by middle-class white people toward middle-class white people.- What We’re Really Afraid Of When We Call Someone “Basic”, Buzzfeed

Similarly, PSL critics started to see the veiled misogyny inherent in calling women basic. Can women enjoying a flavor truly ruin it for everyone? Taste points out,

This is how capitalism works: Consumers enjoy something, brands notice demand and turn the product into a lifestyle, and consumers dutifully recoil.

In the case of pumpkin spice, the flavor is not overtly feminine nor is the drink particularly girly. But, liking it became female-coded and thus uncool.

…the backlash against it underscores a sad but not unexpected assumption when it comes to food trends (and really, all trends): When men enjoy something, they elevate it. But when women enjoy something, they ruin it. – Women Aren’t Ruining Food, Taste

That double standard, obviously, isn’t unique to food: Women have ruined movie franchises, music genres, and, of course, even men themselves. But the particular relationship women have with food makes this even harder to swallow (sorry). Not only have we traditionally been in charge of planning and making household meals, we’ve been commanded to do so while maintaining our beauty and “figures.” We are expected to produce food but are so heavily scrutinized when we consume it that finding joy in what we eat is often an incredibly fraught endeavor. Of course women are ordering salad; we’re taught to fear any “indulgence” bigger than a cupcake. So if you’re angry that a trend is ruining food, stop and ask yourself if the problem is women—or the endless cycle that judges them at every turn. – Women Aren’t Ruining Food, Taste

Calling a PSL basic became a coded way of simply putting something down because women like it — when in actuality a lot of people like it.

It’s all enough to make you wonder if what people actually are really interested in is permission to use the noun and not the adjective. At least a Basic would have the stones to call someone a bitch, if that’s what she meant. After enough white wine. – What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’? from The Cut

Unique taste — and the capacity to avoid the basic — is a privilege. A privilege of location (usually urban), of education (exposure to other cultures and locales), and of parentage (who would introduce and exalt other tastes).- What We’re Really Afraid Of When We Call Someone “Basic”, Buzzfeed

Instead of grappling with the fundamental principles that have wrought this system, however, popular culture has transformed it into a way of disciplining the women who manifest it most vividly. To call someone “basic” is to look into the abyss of continually flattening capitalist dystopia and, instead of articulating and interrogating the fear, transform it into casual misogyny.- What We’re Really Afraid Of When We Call Someone “Basic”, Buzzfeed

Leaving us with a fascinating correlation between the downfall of using basic as an insult with a return of interest in pumpkin spice lattes.

The Takeaway

 

 

In 2024, a pick-me girl would make fun of someone ordering a PSL because it’s a performative, old joke. Is there anything worse than being a pick-me today?

Thus, the pumpkin spice latte has rebounded, partly from a post-COVID nostalgia and partly because people feel like they’re allowed to like something even if a lot of women like it. If the sales hold true, it’s not even a trend anymore. Pumpkin spice is simply part of fall, turning a trend into a tradition.

If you liked this

I’m Danielle, owner of The Shop Shop Marketing Agency in Lynchburg, Virginia. I regularly post about social media and SEO trends here and on social media. Sign up for my twice-a-year newsletter to stay inspired.

Further Reading

Sign Up for Freebies & Giveaways

I send emails twice a year with Lightroom Presets, printables, downloads & more.