Cup With Straw Emoji

A disposable drink cup with a lid and bendy straw. Approved in Unicode 10.0 in 2017 as U+1F964U+1F964 CUP WITH STRAW. Added to Emoji 5.0.

🥤 is the generic cold-drink emoji. The visual signals 'fast-food drink' — big gulp soda, milkshake, smoothie, iced coffee, slushie, any cold beverage you consume with a straw. It's intentionally generic, so users interpret the contents based on context: 'Chick-fil-A 🥤' is lemonade, 'gym 🥤' is a protein shake, 'movie 🥤' is a fountain soda.

Unlike 🧋 (bubble tea, specifically Taiwanese) or 🧃 (juice box, specifically kid-coded), 🥤 stays generic. It's the emoji you reach for when you want 'a cold drink' without specifying what.

The drink category the emoji represents is in major flux. US per-capita carbonated soft-drink consumption is projected to drop 7.2% by 2029; sparkling water is up nearly 10% year-over-year; 60% fewer teenagers drink soda now than in the early 2000s. 🥤 is doing similar work to ☕ in that the emoji is outliving the drink category.

🥤 is a context-dependent emoji. It shows up in:

- Fast-food content. Order screenshots, drive-thru posts, meal combos. McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, any brand with a fountain soda uses 🥤 in marketing. - Gym / fitness content. Protein shakes, electrolyte mixes, post-workout drinks. 🥤💪 is a reliable combo. - Movie / stadium content. Popcorn + soda aesthetic. 🥤🍿 pairs up in every cinema post. - Smoothie / wellness content. Cold smoothies, acai bowls, blended wellness drinks — but 🥛 and 🍹 sometimes compete for the same slot. - Iced coffee / iced tea content. Especially the Gen Z / Gen Alpha iced-everything aesthetic. 'Iced drink girly 🥤' is a content subgenre. - Stanley cup / reusable water bottle era. Ironic after the Stanley quencher craze of 2023-24 (#stanleycup hit 7 billion TikTok views), 🥤 sometimes shows up in posts about expensive water bottles even though the emoji is a disposable cup.

Soda itself is declining — US consumption is down 5% in 2023 alone — but 🥤 usage has stayed stable because it covers so many non-soda drinks now.

🥤 arrived in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017 — relatively late compared to other drink emojis. The design brief was specific: 'cup with straw' generic enough to cover fast food, smoothies, slushies, and to-go drinks. No logos (trademark-safe), no specific color (interpretive), bendy straw (unmistakably fast-food-coded).

Every vendor renders it similarly: a disposable plastic or paper cup, lid, straw poking out. Apple and Google show a pink-and-white cup with a visible straw. Samsung uses a red tone. Microsoft goes plainer. The shared aesthetic anchor is 'drive-thru cup' rather than any specific brand.

The cultural context has shifted since 2017. When the emoji shipped, soda consumption was still trending down but not collapsing. By 2024, Gen Z was drinking 60% less soda than early-2000s teens; sparkling water had become a $63.5 billion global industry. Liquid Death, an aggressively-branded still/sparkling water sold like beer, became a unicorn company. And the reusable-cup moment — Stanley Quenchers, Owala FreeSips, Hydro Flask — turned disposable cups into something of a millennial moral issue.

🥤 quietly absorbed all of that without changing its visual. The emoji means 'cold drink' now more than 'disposable soda.'

1. 2017Approved in Unicode 10.0 as U+1F964 CUP WITH STRAW↗
2. 2019Hydro Flask becomes the VSCO Girl water bottle of choice; 🥤 briefly re-signals 'reusable cup' in content about the Hydro Flask aesthetic
3. 2019Liquid Death launches aggressively-branded canned water; 🥤 starts appearing in edgy / masculine water content
4. 2023Stanley Quencher tumbler goes viral via TikTok car-fire video; #stanleycup hits 7 billion views↗
5. 2024Sparkling water market passes $63.5B globally; US soda consumption down 5% year-over-year
6. 2025[Liquid Death enters energy drinks](https://www.stratagerm.com/post/beverage-market-disruptions); reusable cup market matures; 🥤 usage now split across soda, smoothies, iced coffee, and bottled water equally

• •🥤 was approved in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017 — the same batch that gave us 🦒 (giraffe) and 🤯 (exploding head).
• •US soda consumption has dropped 5% in 2023 alone, and is projected to decline another 7.2% by 2029. 🥤 still gets plenty of use — the drink changed, the emoji didn't.
• •60% fewer US teenagers drink soda now than in the early 2000s. Sparkling water and functional beverages are Gen Z's default.
• •The Stanley Quencher went viral in 2023 on TikTok — a single video of a 40oz tumbler surviving a car fire (ice still shaking inside) drove #stanleycup past 7 billion views. Stanley's 2023 sales passed $750 million.
• •The global sparkling water market was $63.5 billion in Q1 2024, projected to pass $75B by 2027. Plain water is winning against soda in almost every developed market.
• •Liquid Death, a still/sparkling water brand sold with beer-level aggression, announced entry into energy drinks in 2025. It's the single biggest proof that 🥤 no longer automatically means sugary.
• •The emoji's 'bendy straw' design was deliberate — Unicode and vendors wanted an unambiguous 'disposable/takeaway' signal. Paper/plastic straw controversies in the late 2010s didn't change the emoji visual.
• •McDonald's is estimated to sell around 2 billion soft drinks annually. If 🥤 had one brand association, it would be McDonald's — though the emoji stays logo-free by design.

• •Big Gulp / 7-Eleven Slurpee: the original American 'giant soda cup' cultural moment. 🥤 inherits decades of convenience-store aesthetic from this.
• •McDonald's fountain drinks: the single biggest fast-food brand association with 🥤. 'Large Coke' is probably the most-implied specific drink for the emoji globally.
• •Stanley Quencher (2023-24): turned a water tumbler into a $750M+ revenue story. 🥤 briefly became a luxury-drinkware emoji.
• •WaterTok: TikTok subgenre where creators add sugar-free flavored syrups to water to make it taste like desserts. 🥤 anchored the aesthetic.
• •Liquid Death: proof that you can sell still water with beer-branding energy. Changed 🥤's coding for a whole demographic.

• •🥤 is U+1F964U+1F964. Common shortcodes: :cup_with_straw::cup_with_straw: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Emoji 5.0 / Unicode 10.0 — supported universally since mid-2017.
• •For UI, 🥤 reads as 'cold drink' generically. Use for takeout / fast-food / smoothie features. Use 🧋 for boba specifically, 🧃 for kids' drinks, 🥛 for milk.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.