If oil floats on water, how can olive oil infused coffee exist?

Question

I recently have been seeing posts about Starbucks bringing out a strange coffee with olive oil as an ingredient. I was always under the assumption that olive oil would separate from water and not mix. There must be something I’m not seeing here, and googling will not give me the answers. Do they do something to the olive oil perhaps? Thanks.

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Answer 1

Theoretically you can mix oil and water with the help of emulsifiers as other commenters mentioned.

However in the Starbucks drinks the oil just separated. Look up videos of it and you will see a layer of oil floating on top.