What was it like to witness the invention of sliced bread? One day you go to the market and there’s a bag full of pre-sliced bread, ready to go, and you realize you have been living like a chump this whole time. Here you are, slicing your own craggy, uneven slices and getting crumbs everywhere when this innovation — which really did not require any new technology, just a rearrangement of some preexisting ideas — was just sitting there waiting for someone to yank it out of the ether and make it a reality. Some people were understandably skeptical of it, given that this was before preservatives, but soon realized they couldn’t live without it. I think I’d feel at once amazed and furious.
Anyway, that is how I felt upon seeing this cup…thing, sometimes called a Sip and Snack Cup or a Grub Tub, which has gained popularity in food service over the last few years. Maybe you’ve seen it by now, at a ballpark or a concert. If not, a beverage cup topped with a hard plastic collar that holds some form of food, while the straw for your drink cuts through the middle of the ring, allowing one to hold both food and drink in one hand. Crucially, this innovation allows you to enjoy hot food and a cold drink in one container, without your drink warming up or your food being iced down.
I first encountered the sip and snack cup at Yankee Stadium, where the otherwise rancid vibes (go Mets) were tempered when I ordered chicken tenders and fries to float above my Diet Coke. The cup can also be found at Din Soup Dumplings in Brooklyn, New York and Little Pan in Santa Ana, California, where mini dumplings are served atop boba tea. At Tacotarian in Las Vegas, a 32-ounce margarita comes piled with nachos, and at Los Gordos in Milwaukee, one can get mini pancakes on top of chocolate milk.
The possibilities are, of course, endless, and immensely alluring to anyone who has awkwardly tried to hold a glass of wine in one hand and a plate of salmon toasts in the other at a party, and then attempted to actually eat. Trying to both eat and drink at a friend’s book launch, I wound up with three toothpicks behind my ear and a piece of mortadella between my thumbs. It is embarrassing to try to raise an hors d’oeuvres plate to grab a cracker off of it with your mouth, while making eye contact with whoever you were, up until a moment ago, attempting to appear sophisticated in front of.
Instead, imagine loading one of these babies up with pigs in a blanket and a spritz at a wedding, freely eating and drinking and gesturing to your heart’s content! What ease, to not have to hover at the cheese plate, but to take your food with you to the other side of the room — and actually be able to eat it! Oh, you think that looks tacky during your cocktail hour? Maybe you should have thought of that before providing four standing tables for 100 people.
This invention brings me joy because it solves a problem. There are many reasons one would opt for takeout cuisine, whether it’s because the restaurant doesn’t provide full-service, or a preference for eating outdoors or while on the move. I think of the number of times I’ve scarfed a deli sandwich or a slice of pizza on the way from work to someone’s birthday party that was scheduled from 6-10 p.m. at a bar and did not include food (this should be illegal). Until now, this kind of eating has been limited to what I can maneuver with one hand, and certainly doesn’t involve a simultaneous drink. But the sip and snack cup lets me eat dumplings while taking a walk in the park, or enjoy a baseball game without balancing a too-hot tray of fried chicken on my lap.
The “innovations” often foisted on us are things no one asked for, solving problems no one has actually had. There are the nefarious Ray-Ban surveillance glasses for the problem of not being able to record everyone around you without taking out your conspicuous phone. Even in the food space, so much of it is nonsense. Those lanyard things that hold a cup around your neck are still precarious as hell and not all that easy to drink from. And no, your big-ass cup doesn’t need a selfie stick. “Not being able to eat and drink with one hand” isn’t exactly a climate change-level problem, but it is a tangibly annoying thing made less annoying by industrial design.
Strangely, I can see the version of reality in which I am disgusted with this Stanley cupification of eating, in which everything is optimized. I have railed before about the pressure Americans face to be productive at every moment, a stereotype we’ve carried for a long time. In the book Lustful Appetites, Rachel Hope Cleves writes that during the first half of the 19th century, “Visitors to the United States in particular frequently commented on how Americans shoveled down their food, inhaling vast quantities in record time so they could return to business as quickly as possible.” As a society, we are not good at enjoying ourselves. We pursue happiness, but seem to have no idea what to do with it when we catch it.
But the innovation of the sip and snack cup is about maximizing leisure. I’m not surprised that the places this cup is showing up — sports games, the Las Vegas strip, food trucks — are places designed for your free time.
Now that we have this creation, surely classier and more aesthetically pleasing versions of it are to follow, yes? Let’s get a martini glass with a skirt for fries in here!
