A sample is not a small serving. It is a different transaction with a different purpose, and the moment you serve it on the same spoon you use for a paid portion, you have blurred the line for both you and the customer.
Two spoons, two jobs
Mini tasting spoons are sized for sample portions, small enough for a single bite, which is what makes them practical when someone wants to try several flavors before ordering. That is the entire brief. One bite, one decision, next flavor.
A full-size dessert spoon holds considerably more. Give someone a sample on one and two things happen. They take more product than you intended, and psychologically they have received something closer to a serving than a taste, which makes the decision that follows less urgent rather than more.
The cost side, honestly
Both come a thousand to a case at the same price, so there is no saving in the spoon itself. The saving is entirely in the product that goes on it, and on a busy Saturday with a queue of undecided customers, that difference is not trivial.
Where the middle option fits
There is a third size that gets overlooked. Slim-profile spoons sit between the mini and the full dessert spoon, with a narrower bowl that fits smaller cups and tasting portions where a full-size spoon sits awkwardly against the rim.
That awkwardness is a real problem rather than an aesthetic one. Hand someone a 3 oz or 4 oz cup with a full-size spoon in it and the spoon does not sit in the cup properly, will not rest against the side, and tips out when they set it down. Match the spoon to the cup, not to your default.
Building the sampling station
Three things decide whether sampling helps or just costs you money.
The spoon size sets the portion. Clear or a single neutral color keeps attention on the product rather than the utensil, and it means you never have to think about whether it clashes with a seasonal cup. And the location matters more than either: a sampling station within reach of the queue lets undecided customers resolve themselves before they get to the front, which is the actual return on the whole exercise.
If children are a large share of your trade, there is an argument for putting the color changing spoons at the sampling station instead, because the effect happens during exactly the moment someone is holding the spoon and paying attention to it. We went into where that lands in how color changing spoons work.
What not to do
Do not run heavy-duty spoons at the sampling station. It is the most common quiet overspend we see, and it solves a problem that does not exist at sample scale, for reasons set out in why heavy duty spoons exist.
Mini spoons run in clear, black, yellow, pink and green, and there is a 3 inch version if you want slightly more than a single bite. All the sizes sit together in the spoons and straws range.