Poor man's latte / ghetto latte

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Tue Dec 4 19:13:45 UTC 2007


The earliest Webcite I can find for "poor man's latte" is Mar 13, 2006
(http://dc.metblogs.com/archives/2006/03/costco_the_land_1.phtml) by
narni therese: "my favorite is the "poor man's latte" where a customer
makes their own iced latte using milk from the condiment bar."

The next hit I see is Aug 14 2006
(http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2006/08/a_seemingly_min.html) by
CuteBarista!: "(we have at least one person per morning that comes up to
the counter and demands a free cup of coffee, not to mention the poor
man's latte folks, etc), we would be losing serious money."

Around September 2006, both "ghetto latte" and "poor man's latte" seem
to have hit currency in the press, though the comment from CuteBarista!
indicates the word was commonly known by then. Probably some earlier
hits for people with access to newspaper archives.

There are other, earlier hits, but they don't refer to this particular
practice.

Benjamin Barrett
a cyberbreath for language life
livinglanguages.wordpress.com

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