For years, baristas have been known to add little notes to takeaway cups, a bit like an artist signing a canvas or a craftsperson leaving a personal stamp on their work.
Most of the time, it’s harmless: a quick “have a great day,” a smiley remark, or simply writing a customer’s name clearly so orders don’t get swapped with someone else’s skinny decaf matcha latte.
However, one Starbucks employee in Canada appears to have pushed that idea further, leaving customer Ari Chance with a “hidden” message that made her say she was ‘never going back’ to that location.
Chance shared the incident in a video posted to the TikTok account she runs with her identical twin, Noe. In the clip, she shows a large cups with ‘SECRET MESSAGE’ written prominently on the side.
A thick black arrow pointed downward, directing her to the very bottom of the cup—where the ingredient and safety text sits, in the section most people typically ignore.
The worker had circled the first line of the fine print and scribbled through parts of it. Under normal circumstances, the warning says: “Careful, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.”
This time, though, words had been removed so the message read: ‘Careful, you’re extremely hot.’
Chance didn’t see it as flattering. Reacting in the video, she asked: “What just happened at Starbucks? Never going back there.”
While she clearly found the note unsettling, a huge number of viewers—among the 2.9 million who watched—had a very different take.
Some commenters viewed it as a playful, romantic gesture—an unexpected bit of charm during an otherwise routine coffee run. One person wrote, ‘That was smooth, not going to lie.’
Another argued that it was more endearing than inappropriate, adding: “It’s cute, girls say guys never do anything. He just put his heart out to you.”
But not everyone was convinced it was a one-off. A few people suggested the line might be something the person behind the counter uses regularly. One user commented: “I’m wondering how many other girls he did that to.”
Others focused less on the flirtation and more on whether the story was even real, pointing to how easily content can be staged online.
One viewer suggested: “Imagine if she did that by herself just for the TikTok.” Others also questioned why she waited until she was sitting in her car to film the video if she was genuinely caught off guard.
And with no direct proof shown of who actually wrote it, another commenter claimed: ‘She definitely wrote that herself.’