How To Order Keto at Starbucks: It’s Easier Than You Think!


How To Order Keto at Starbucks: It’s Easier Than You Think!

If you’re following a keto diet, your meal choices become limited. It can feel especially limiting when trying to order at your favorite places, such as Starbucks. This post walks you through how to order keto at Starbucks.

You can order keto-friendly drinks and food from Starbucks by following a few simple steps. By the end of this post, you’ll feel more confident about how to order keto at Starbucks.

So let’s get into it!

Starbucks coffee cup with a green straw.

List of Keto-Friendly Drinks From Starbucks

We’ve compiled a list of keto-friendly drinks you can order from Starbucks without affecting your diet. You’re in for a surprise when you realize you can still order your favorites – with a few small adjustments.

A person holding a drink in a store.

How To Order a Keto Frappuccino at Starbucks

If it’s hot out there, you can enjoy a Frappuccino while sticking to your diet. But the base version is full of carbs. So you need to know how to order a keto frappuccino at Starbucks and control carb consumption.

Order a Grande iced coffee with two slashes of heavy cream. Add up to two pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup. Make sure to get the drink double-blended.

This will make your Frappuccino creamy and sweet while having only 5 grams of carbs.

How To Order Keto Pink Drink at Starbucks

Classic pink drinks offered by Starbucks are too delicious to stop ordering. But the carbs they contain are high enough to throw you off your diet. You should know how to order a keto pink drink so that you can enjoy it without compromising your diet.

Ask the barista to give you the tall pink drink. The trick is to make sure to ask for heavy cream and sugar-free syrup. This drink contains only ten grams of carbs.

How To Order Keto Coffee at Starbucks

If you like cold brew coffee, you can learn how to order keto coffee at Starbucks with vanilla cream. Ask the barista for Grande Vanilla Sweet Cream cold brew with a splash of heavy cream. Also, you can add two pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup.

This drink contains just 1-2 grams of carbs.

 How To Order Keto at Starbucks – Double Shot

This is a recommendation from a barista at Starbucks. A venti double shot has five espresso shots, and the baristas shake it with ice. Finally, they top it with 2% milk.

You need to know how to order keto at Starbucks if you want to cut your carbs. So switch the 2% milk with almond milk, which contains fewer carbs. You can also try experimenting with different sugar-free syrups to find the perfect flavor combination.

A cup of Masala chai.

How To Order Keto Chai at Starbucks – The Delicacy of India

While most Chai drinks contain a lot of carbs, you can still enjoy it as an occasional treat. You can customize your order to ensure the carb content is relatively low compared to the classic variant.

Ask your barista for a Grande Iced, Lightly Sweet Chai Latte. Make sure it does not come with a liquid cane. You can use any sweetener you want (stick to the keto-friendly ones) and breve it.

This chai will be keto-friendly with a little compromise while ensuring it is not as watery as chai tea black. Also, adding fewer sweetener packs will allow you to enjoy the spices present in the chai. Since you can drink it once in a while, you can add more pumps of chai for increased flavor.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks: What Foods Are Keto-Friendly?

While Starbucks doesn’t have many options for keto foods, some low-carb options are available. If you want to order some food with your keto Starbucks order, take a look below.

Cheddar Moon Cheese – Yum and Crunch in the Same Bite

Cheddar moon cheese is an excellent option for a quick bite. It contains only 5 grams of carbs per bag. The cheesy flavor and the satisfying crunch make it a keto-friendly favorite.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks: Roasted Almonds

Classic roasted almonds are generally available at the cash registers. They are dry and only contain almonds and sea salt.

Almonds are tasty and contain lots of protein while having only 4 grams of carbs per packet.

Egg and Cheese Protein Box – Best Source of Protein

This is the ideal box for grab-and-go meals. This box contains fat and protein-rich foods like peanut butter, eggs, and cheddar cheese.

You can avoid fruits that are higher in carbs and keep them as a great keto-friendly meal.

A barista making a drink.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks – Things To Avoid

A Starbucks barista made an excellent guide on r/keto on ordering keto coffee from the menu. They also mentioned things to avoid. Here is a list of items that you should avoid.

  • Standard Frappuccino: Classic Frappuccinos are full of sugar and carbs. The light base Frappuccino contains 50% less sugar. However, it is still more than enough to break your keto diet. It is better to make custom keto-friendly Frappuccinos.
  • Refreshers: Refreshers contain a ton of sugar, so it is not friendly for a keto diet.
  • Breakfast Sandwich: Avoid the breakfast sandwich entirely. The eggs inside the sandwich are full of carbs due to the mixtures used.
  • Wraps: The wraps contain tons of carbs – so avoid them.  
  • White Mocha: The base version is full of carbs, and there is no skinny or light version.
  • Matcha: Any matcha product comes with a pre-sweetened mix. If you want to learn how to order keto at Starbucks, then you should avoid this.
  • Chai: The lightly sweet chai contains a lot of carbs. If you are a tea drinker, you can buy their chai tea bags as they have no carbs.

Pro Tips on How To Order Keto at Starbucks

Now that you know a little more about how to order Keto at Starbucks, here are some additional pro tips. These tips will help you order keto-friendly Starbucks with ease every time.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks: Avoid Whipped Cream

Adding whipped cream isn’t a good idea when you’re on the keto diet. It seems like something insignificant, but it can have a detrimental effect on your diet.

Whipped cream contains a ton of carbs and sugar. That’s why all keto-friendly drinks at Starbucks do not contain whipped cream.

It’s also a good idea to skip the caramel drizzle, as it is just molten sugar.

A menu on the wall in a coffee shop.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks: Look at the Nutrition Menu

When learning how to order keto at Starbucks, you should always look closely at the menu and nutritional information.

Many items on Starbucks’ menu contain a lot of sugar. This is especially true for the drinks that come with classic syrup.

A cup of iced coffee can contain up to 20 grams of carbs. However, tell your baristas that you are on a keto diet, and they will not add any syrup.

Ordering a standard cold brew or Americano will keep you in check with your keto diet.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks – Keto vs Skinny Drinks

While you may think that skinny drinks from Starbucks’ menu are healthy and contain fewer carbs, it’s not necessarily true.

By ‘skinny,’ Starbucks means that the drinks contain fat-free milk and sugar-free syrup. But they are still high in carbs. In fact, non-fat milk contains 12 grams of carbs, and 2% milk contains approximately 13 grams of carbs.

This high amount of sugar does not make it fit for a ketogenic diet. Also, the sugar-free vanilla syrup they provide adds up to 19 grams of carbs to a drink.

Even for hot coffee, avoiding steamed milk and asking for heavy cream instead is better. This is because heavy cream contains only 6.6 grams of carbs.

You can also ask for unsweetened almond milk. Coconut milk is also a great option, but Starbucks may not always have the unsweetened version. Be sure to ask before you order coconut milk, or your carb intake will increase.

Note: Avoid soy milk as it also contains lots of carbs.

Brown coffee beans scattered on a table, in a cup and on white spoons.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks – Sugar-Free vs Carb-Free

You may ask for sugar-free syrup instead of classic syrup in your drink. You need to know the difference when learning how to order keto at Starbucks.

One pump of syrup contains 1 gram of carbs. This is because sugar-free syrups contain a polysaccharide called maltodextrin – AKA sugar.

It also contains another artificial sweetener known as sucralose. It is better to avoid artificial sweeteners, but adding sugar-free syrup occasionally in your drinks won’t affect your diet. Just make sure that it does not add up to your daily carb intake too much.

Here are some sugar-free syrup options that contain only one gram of carbs per pump:

  1. Vanilla syrup
  2. Hazelnut syrup
  3. Cinnamon dolce syrup
  4. Caramel syrup
  5. Peppermint syrup
  6. Mocha sauce

Note: Generally, a barista gives about four pumps of syrup for each drink. So, make sure that you tell your barista specifically to give only one or two pumps of sugar-free syrup. It will help you control your carb intake.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks: Avoiding the Sweeteners

Starbucks has a lot of different sweetener packs, and a lot of them even say “zero calories.” But consuming them will not be suitable for your diet.

Generally, two popular sweetener packets are Stevia In The Raw and Splenda. The Stevia packs are mainly composed of dextrose, another name for glucose, and a little bit of stevia.

Meanwhile, the Splenda packs contain dextrose and a small proportion of sucralose.

While both sweeteners are great alternatives to sugar, each packet contains about one or two grams of carbs and sugar.

If you consume one or two packets per drink, you’ll be on track with your keto diet. However, this can add up, especially if you like your drinks sweet. So keep an eye on how many packets of artificial sweeteners you use per day.

You can check out online shopping sites to find out which keto-friendly sweetener packs are available in your location.

How To Order Keto at Starbucks – Wrapping it Up

Choosing the right item from the Starbucks menu can be challenging if you are on a keto diet. However, the goal is to enjoy the menu while keeping your carbs in check.

So you should avoid items like whipped cream, skinny drinks, 2% milk, and syrups.

And if things look confusing, you can always ask your barista for a keto-friendly drink.

Our post has given you some valuable insights into how to order keto at Starbucks!

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