The color of the coffee cup is related to the sale of coffee?

An owner of a coffee shop who has been running a coffee shop for eight years once told me that if you drink coffee from a white ceramic cup, the coffee will taste a little more bitter than a glass. We should know that these two kinds of cups are most frequently used in cafes. My colleagues and I want to use our knowledge to prove this point. Although there have been numerous studies on the relationship between color and taste in recent years, no one has studied the effect of people's subjective perception of coffee cup color on coffee taste. We are very surprised because most people in the world drink coffee every day, but no one has ever paid attention to this problem.

People's subjective perception of color can have an impact on taste, which comes from an academic study by the famous scholar Benita Piqueras-Fitzman. According to his research, strawberry mousse on a white porcelain plate tastes 10% sweeter and 15% richer than the same mousse cake on a black porcelain plate.

Coffee and color difference

Based on the above findings, coupled with the cafe owner's point of view, we put forward the hypothesis that brown is reminiscent of bitterness (or rather, brown is not reminiscent of sweetness). If this assumption is true, coffee in a white porcelain cup does taste more bitter than coffee in a transparent glass cup. At the same time, we also thought of another possibility that might affect the taste of coffee. If we want to make a lighter, light brown coffee more bitter, then we should use a coffee cup with a greater color difference from brown, such as a light blue coffee cup, because brown will look darker against light blue. If this is true, the bitterness of lighter brown coffee in a light blue porcelain cup should be the same as that of dark brown coffee in a transparent glass.

In fact, many food manufacturers have long been using chromatic aberration to promote their products. For example, Heinz, a famous ketchup maker, uses turquoise cans to set off the sour and sweet tomato baked beans, while Cadbury, a famous chocolate maker, uses purple wrapping paper to highlight the attractive luster of chocolate. In one of our experiments, after comparing the white porcelain cup with the glass cup, we tried to use the colored glass to compare with the white porcelain cup. The results show that the color of the glass also has an effect on the taste of coffee. In the end, we came to the conclusion that coffee in white porcelain cups tastes much sweeter than coffee in glasses and colored glasses (light blue), so it tastes much more bitter.

Implications for daily coffee drinking and coffee sales

According to our research results, the color of coffee cups will have a great impact on the taste of coffee. Dutch psychologist Apdixus once said that the hype about "espresso can be bitter" in coffee advertisements has led people to mistakenly believe that the concentration and bitterness of coffee are positively related. But our results show that the more bitter the coffee, the higher the concentration. At the same time, we also found that drinking coffee from a white porcelain cup tasted more bitter because the coffee became less sweet. So we can also draw the following conclusion: for the human body, brown is not reminiscent of sweetness. Therefore, we suggest that coffee shops should take into account the effect of color on the taste of coffee when buying coffee cups. The correct choice of coffee cup color may bring more repeat customers to the coffee shop.