Of late, I've written about shapeflation 1. here and 2. here. Now I seem to have a new hobby of collecting examples.
First, let's define shapeflation. Shapeflation is altering the shape of a package or product to deceptively hide the fact that there is less of the product actually being sold. Assuming the product's price remains the same as before the shape change, shapeflation is "shrinkflation" that is achieved through deceptively altering the product's shape.
Shapeflation, episode 3
Recently, my wife ordered a martini and it was received as it appears above. That's fine, but let's talk about the fact that it seems to come up short from where I'd expect it to be filled.
Understand, whomever first designed the martini glass shape gets an A for style. It has a truly iconic shape. For trivia buffs, this article says it emerged in Paris in 1925 with a nod to Art Deco's glory era. But, the designer gets an F for practicality. Like women's high heels, they're sexy, but your feet hurt. Due to a martini glass's conical shape, a martini naturally sloshes around and spills out of the top. This is almost expected. That is, it spills unless you don't fill it up very much.
In this way, the design of the martini glass might be one of the most brilliant instances of shapeflation ever, albeit unintentional shapeflation. The top of the glass is the section that you do not want to fill and thereby gives a bartender the perfect excuse to indeed fill it short: "I don't want it to spill all over your nice dress." But, here's the rub, being cone-shaped: that top section holds the vast volume of the glass.
Numbers
I put Grok to use to estimate some numbers with the prompt below:
View the martini in the attached image. Calculate and estimate the volume of the glass total, the volume that is actually filled, and the volume that is air at the top. Estimate the percent that is empty. Assume a martini cannot be filled to the actual brim else it will spill, then imagine the drink is filled to a practical level near the top. Estimate the volume again and compare it to the volume in the actual image. Include the percent difference between the served drink and the amount that it should be.
And Grok told me this:
The standard martini glass has a total volume of approximately 237 ml (8 oz). Based on analyzing the uploaded image, the liquid level appears to be about 90% of the bowl height, accounting for the conical shape of the glass. The filled volume of the drink is estimated at 173 ml, with 64 ml of air at the top. This means the glass is approximately 27% empty by volume.A martini glass can't be filled to the absolute brim without spilling, but a practical fill level near the top would be about 95% of the bowl height, yielding an estimated volume of 203 ml. Compared to this practical amount, the served drink in the image is about 15% less than it should be.
So, Grok says that even when figuring in that you can't and likely shouldn't fill a martini to the brim, my wife's drink was about 15% less than what it should have been. It's unadvisable for a bartender to pull this "trick" though. It's fairly obvious to anyone who looks and that shortage may well be tossed back as a shortage in bartender tip. (In our case, I think the bartender was simply in a rush and had no sneaky malice, and we didn't tip short.) If martinis are filled short over time, martini by martini, even a visually unnoticeable 5% shortage would add up. Tell any business, "Here's a simple way to fudge out 5% more profit by doing nothing extra at all," and they'll likely do it. Shapeflation.
To be fair
To be fair, a martini isn't truly actual shapeflation. The martini glass was not altered by a sneaky company or bartender. It just is, well, a martini glass and has that built-in shapeflationesque shape to it due to it's conical design.
To be true shapeflation, someone would need to alter the glass shape. Specifically, they would need a glass that doesn't merely rise up from the stem in a straight line, a V shape, but rather, would rise up and flare out. This would create even more volume in the top portion of the glass. This would mean that if the glass were filled, say 1/4 inch from the top vertically, the volume lost would be even greater still as compared to a typical martini glass.
I searched around. Certainly, this flared out glass must be out there. I could not find one (but I still think it must exist). So, I drew the shapeflation martini glass. After drawing it, then taking a look, it reminded me of a hibiscus, or one of those Chihuly glass blowings (see the Chihuly bar which needs this glass terribly). I'm going with "hibiscus glass" name and I'm trademarking it right here and now, lest it really ain't out there yet. The hibiscus glass is shapeflation, made beautiful.
Hibiscus numbers
Because I'm cheap, this kind of stuff vexes me. And because I'm nerdy, I wonder about the numbers behind these things...I kind of want to see if my degree of vexation is proportionally correlated to the degree of shapeflation.(Wow, that came out very nerdy indeed.) Kind of Nerd Around and Find Out, NAFO.
I went to Grok again and uploaded my hibiscus glass drawing. Essentially, I asked it, for a hibiscus glass, to estimate the volume that would be empty at the top if served at a typical fill-level. I asked it to do the same for a normal martini glass, then show the compared results in a table. Grok did some nice thinking, and it was interesting to watch. Unfortunately, for some reason, Grok didn't "print" its thought process (convo here), but went straight to the results table:
Glass Type: Percent Volume Empty
Hibiscus Glass: 34%
Normal Martini Glass: 27%
So, there you go. A hibiscus glass would save you bartenders 7% less on your liquor. These are martinis filled to a "normal" level, not shorting the customer, just making a martini (and saving 7%). On a busy night, imagine how many bottles of gin or vodka would that save! And, you get the extra style of that Chihuly-looking hibiscus glass. Like moving from a boxy, gas-guzzling station wagon to an aerodynamic sports car, the hibiscus glass saves money and adds style! Drop my residual royalties below:
- Hibiscus glass royalties via https://coinos.io/pay/crrdlx - (bitcoin Lightning Network, Ecash, Bitcoin, Liquid, or Bolt11 or 12, more?).
