The wellness slogan and the whipped cream

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A woman in a black leather jacket and ripped blue jeans walking past Rocket Man, a salad and juice bar in Cork, holding a clear plastic Starbucks Frappuccino cup with the green twin-tailed siren logo and carrying a black newlook.com shopping bag, beside a black-and-white striped barrier; the café window behind her shows menu boards in reflection and a wellness slogan reading "It's not low-calorie. It's not being hungry and feeling deprived. It's nourishing your body with real, fresh foods so that you are consistently satisfied and energised".

I shot this on Princes Street in Cork back in 2016, and I had it filed in my head all this time as a Starbucks-versus-Starbucks gag. The wellness sermon in the window was contradicted by the Frappuccino in the hand.

Turns out the window belongs to Rocket Man, a salad and juice bar, which means the slogan is just an honest pitch for what’s inside. The joke isn’t the shop being two-faced; it’s the woman walking past it with a competitor’s plastic cup and a New Look bag, completely uninterested in being nourished, satisfied or energised on Rocket Man’s terms. Three brands sharing a frame, none of them in agreement.

The black-and-white striped barrier slices the scene in half like a referee, the leather jacket and ripped jeans give the date away within a year, and the lower-case earnestness of the window text feels very 2016 indeed. Ten years on, the Frappuccino lid is the same shape, the uniform has barely shifted, and I owe Rocket Man a small apology for misreading their window.

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