Part of the reason they are big in the US may be the fact that we drive so much. There are many Starbucks stores with drive-thru windows.

If you want to consume a beverage while driving, a covered cup with a straw is much easier.

(One could now say “Americans shouldn’t drive so much!” or “don’t consume food while driving”, I guess. We should probably also build more dense housing in walkable neighborhoods, invest in mass transit, and shorten commutes and working hours so everybody has time for a leisurely breakfast at the neighborhood cafe.)

One of the coffee chains I use has stoppers to keep the coffee from sloshing out of the sipping hole in the lid while I'm driving the coffee to the office.

The other one does not offer stoppers. So I have to improvise with either wooden stirrers or plastic (for now) straws. The wooden stirrers don't fill the sipping hole entirely but they do enough to the movement of the coffee that I don't have to worry about coffee sloshing out. But they make the coffee taste like wood. So I use a plastic straw. At first I took their advice and did not drink through the straw. But if the coffee has cooled sufficiently to be sipped carelessly, it can be sipped through a straw.

Here's an idea. An autoclave, IV hardware, and coffee sold to the public in pouches. The hardware is reused with the help of the autoclave.

When Starbucks introduced the little green non-recyclable stopper sticks they claimed the idea was for people to wash and reuse them. But there are no signs in Starbucks to encourage this and of course no one does. Except maybe me. I got sick of finding them everywhere. There must be a hundred under my car seat. So I've allowed myself no more. I've carried about a half dozen in every handbag, washed and reused them. My BF and I joke that everyone should be issued one stopper stick per lifetime....ha! But recently I was shocked to find out Starbucks cups aren't even recyclable! So I bought one of their reusable plastic cups, only to find their little green stopper sticks don't fit. :(

C'mon Starbucks, with all your profits, you can do better than this.

protecting those pearly whites ;)

it helps, whether good dental care or not, to find ways to prevent staining your teeth as part of regular, daily routine

The whole point of drinking a $5+ beverage is to enjoy the taste of it. That means, even if you use a straw, you're going to hold the beverage in your mouth so that your tongue and nose can experience it.

Straws really are only necessary with extremely elderly people, the sick and young children wherever one can't reliably lift the cup to their lips because of limited motor skills. Or perhaps in the USA where people drink 32 OZ beverages from a bucket that is liable to spill because of the waves caused by the ice cubes bobbing around in it.

Okay, I'll help you out. Quit caffeine.

No more soda, no more coffee, no more stains, no more jitters. Detox is unpleasant but only takes a couple days. The cravings never go away though.

Coffee is protective of the cardiovascular system, and reduces mortality.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42081278

I didn't need a BBC article to tell me that coffee reduces mortality -- the odds of coworkers dying drops significantly after one has their first (or third) cup ;-)

No more fun.

So straws are a beauty product! But you still don't use them with hot coffee right? Otherwise you get melted straws and yucky plastic tasting coffee.

Most people I know who insist on straws for everything cite hygiene. You don’t know what contaminants are on that cup rim, bottle, or can opening, but you can reasonably assume the straw (if you unwrap it yourself) is cleaner.

Drinks are easy to spill when walking around. Outside of the straw, these cups are mainly sealed vessels. How often do you go for a walk with a latte or water in hand?