There's already a Starbucks on nearly every street corner in L.A., but starting this week, a Starbucks frappuccino truck might be parked on your street corner, too. The brightly-colored truck, which looks like something Urban Outfitters might've designed, made its debut last month in San Diego and hits L.A.'s most visible tourist destinations – the Hollywood Bowl, Venice Boardwalk and Dodger Stadium – tonight through next Sunday. 

The Frappuccino Truck Tour, as its billed, is clearly a campaign aimed at Millennials who'd much rather buy from food trucks and local market vendors than from a corporate brick-and-mortar storefront. Hot on the heels of the Roy Choi-advised food truck movie, Chef, and Food Network's Great Food Truck Race reality show, Starbucks is attempting to camouflage its corporate ubiquity by debuting a hand-painted gas-guzzler. For Starbucks, jumping on the foodie bandwagon now literally just means launching a food truck. ]

Credit: Flickr/Yoshihide Nomura

Credit: Flickr/Yoshihide Nomura

Starbucks practically invented the coffee drive-thru, but drive-thru's conjure up images of busy soccer parents in mini-vans. Food trucks, on the other hand, cater to Twitter-savvy teens and young urban professionals –  the types of active folks who frequent the Paddleboard Ocean Festival, L.A. Pride, the Chalk Festival and the Color Run, all of which are pit stops on the frappuccino truck's two-week run. 

Of course, no food truck builds a fan base without a Twitter account. Starbucks' Frappuccino Twitter account encourages followers to take selfies using goofy hashtags like #fromwhereIsip and #sipface, a branded variant of the “duck face” popularized by “selfies.” There's also a Tumblr page dedicated to animated gifs and memes of young people making #sipface and having a blast with their Frappuccinos. From where we sip, it just looks like Starbucks is trying way too hard to win us over. 


Want more Squid Ink? Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.