We discover the truth behind Japanese portion sizes.   

For many years, 7-Eleven Japan has been famous for its coffees, which are a major driver of sales for the convenience store chain. As a pioneer in offering affordable, freshly brewed coffee in convenience stores, many customers still make 7-Eleven their top choice for a cup of Joe, but now they can get an even bigger fix, as the chain has now added a never-before seen extra large size to its lineup.

With regular and large sizes satisfying customers for years, some are speculating the new larger size might have something to do with demand from overseas customers, who are now visiting the country in record-breaking numbers. Whatever the reason for it, it’s now being rolled out at branches around Japan, but with one glaring omission — the millilitres it contains.

To find out just how much a 7-Eleven extra-large size coffee in Japan might be, we decided to buy one, along with a large size, for an in-depth investigation. As we were after an iced coffee, we picked ours up in the freezer section, where there were instructions to keep the lid until extraction is complete, using the dedicated Seven Cafe machine at the counter after paying.

The lids next to the machine are only for regular and large sizes, which is why you’ll need to keep the extra large lid in your hand after popping the cup into the machine to fill it with coffee.

One other interesting quirk about the XL lid is it doesn’t have a hole for a straw, which is something to keep in mind if you prefer to drink your coffee with a straw.

At 300 yen (US$2.05), the XL is 50 yen more than the 250-yen L size, so we were curious to know — how much more coffee do you get for that extra 50 yen? To find out, our reporter P.K. Sanjun got out a tea strainer to catch the ice as he poured the liquid from the large-sized coffee into a measuring jug.

Although he took this photo before tipping all the liquid in, he found that the large size contained exactly 300 millilitres (10.1 ounces) of coffee, so the price per millilitre was about 0.84 yen.

Next, he measured out the extra large size, where he found that it contained 430 millilitres, so the price per millilitre was roughly 0.7 yen, which felt like a pretty good deal. However, when he looked at the cups, he saw that the XL clearly had much less ice in it, meaning the ice had melted faster, slightly skewing the results. Adjusting for the melted ice, P.K. figured it was safe to say that the XL would’ve contained about 400 millilitres of coffee, which amounts to around 0.75 yen per millilitre.

By his calculations, the XL is in fact better value than the L size, giving you a saving of close to 0.1 yen per millilitre.

Compared to the L though, the ice in the XL melts quickly, so the taste gets watered down and becomes lukewarm faster so that’s an important point that coffee lovers will want to keep in mind when choosing sizes.

Although the new size is cost-effective, we reckon there’s still some room for improvement with it, and we’d like to see them add a straw hole to the lid as well. With staff saying the new XL size was only introduced last week, and it’s not even mentioned anywhere on the official site yet, we have high hopes that after a few tweaks it will become as sought-after as 7-Eleven’s other coffee sizes so that all coffee lovers can enjoy it, perhaps with a secret 7-Eleven doughnut as well.

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