If you came of age in the early aughts like I did, “ready-to-drink latte” probably conjures a very particular image for you: a beige, syrupy-sweet Starbucks Frappuccino in its iconic glass milk bottle. For many of us adolescent caffeine-heads-in-training, those bottled Starbucks beverages were the closest thing to coffee house culture we could access in our suburban towns — they were available at every grocery store and 7-11, and while they weren’t good, exactly, they were a crucial entry point to what would later become a lifelong obsession with coffee snobbery. (We’ve all got to start somewhere, right?)
While those will always occupy a certain nostalgic place in my heart, I was surprised on a recent grocery store trip to see just how much the ready-to-drink coffee aisle has ballooned. Sure, we’ve all gotten more savvy about bean origins, fair trade, and the merits of nitro cold brew since my days of sipping Frappuccinos at the local strip mall, but today’s options go beyond that. Single-origin claims mingle with impressive protein content, and there are even touted benefits like boosted collagen and increased focus. It’s all a far cry from the convenience store shelves of my youth.
But the question remained: Would any of these (decidedly hipper-looking) canned coffee options hold a candle to my favorite $9 latte at the local coffee shop? To put them to the test, I cracked open over a dozen ready-to-drink options from 11 brands, ranging from widely available to mail-order varieties. Here are the ones that stood out.
