This tracks. I get Starbucks giftcards (as gifts, not for myself) and typically load them into the app so I can order ahead and spend less time waiting at the store. It pisses me off to no end that when I get to the last dollar or two, I can’t use it without reloading like $20 onto the app. I refuse to do that and lose the money.
I’ve never had a Starbucks gift card or used the app, but in the article they say that in store you can do a split payment using up either gift card or app balance, and pay the remainder cash. Is that something you’ve tried?
Starbucks disputed the allegations and told Fortune that customers can pay for their orders with whatever balance is left on their app or gift card and pay the remaining amount in cash at the store, thus reaching a zero balance.
So, this is not true? What’s the actual truth to this functionality?
The truth is that a lot of loyal customers are boycotting Starbucks right now over unionization and their stance on Palestine. So Starbucks is trying to bring them back physically into the stores and are using the balance on their cards as leverage. Starbucks has already uncharacteristically been running several promotions to get people back to their stores, with the red cup and the Stanley thing.
If Starbucks has to return the customers’ unused balance without bringing them into the stores, then they may have lost those customers for good.
While the news is interesting, it is not about technology at all. Just because Starbucks has an app does not make this technology related news.
It’s about the intersection of their app, their rewards systems and the dark patterns in the whole system that lead to them accruing a lot of money that they don’t really deserve. That’s pretty much a tech story.
The source is Android Authority and it appears to be referencing dark patterns in mobile apps
So, I’m a black coffee drinker. No sweetners, no creams, none of that garbage. Went one time to get me a cup of coffee from Starbucks. It tasted like shit. It was burnt. I thought it was just that one place, but nope, it’s every Starbucks place. Their coffee recipe is shit in and of itself, but they hide it under the ton of sugar and other shit they put in it. I never understood why people would kill for it. Also, why does a small cup of black coffee cost $2+?
From what I understand, part of Starbucks thing is catering to people who like burnt and bitter. Kind of like the emo crowd.
That shit is disgusting. I have read somewhere (not 100% sure) that Starbucks failed miserably in Australia because of how shitty their coffee tasted for the Aussies.
Their black coffee isn’t great, but their espresso is good which is what makes it into the sugary drinks. I think the main draw is that it’s pretty consistently decent, while with other chains like Dunkin or Wawa you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get but it’s probably not going to be that good. I’ll also add that the coffee they sell at grocery stores isn’t bad (although it’s far from my favorite). I think it’s much worse at Starbucks itself because it inevitably ends up burnt pretty shortly after it’s brewed.
As far as price, it costs $2 because that’s the price that Starbucks determined maximizes profit. From what I’ve seen at other coffee shops though including Mom and Pop ones, that price point is pretty typical.
Heavily disagree, I drink the espresso there once in a while and it tastes like shit every time.
*When compared to independent shops.
Yeah, their espresso is also roasted to death.
If you need drinkable brewed coffee from SB, you have to order the blonde roast. They scorch the everliving fuck out of their regular stuff to ensure consistency regardless of source, so even if you normally don’t, if you want “black” coffee from SB, you’ll be better off with the blonde. If you’re brewing by volume of grounds, lighter roast will have more caffeine anyway (they’re the same if you brew by weight).
You can get coffee from other places than chain coffeeshops for less money and better coffee. The café near me sells great espresso for 12 MAD (about 1 €). The place is nice, has a waiter and coffee is server in glass or porcelaine cups in stead of cheap plastic. You can get it from other places for the cheapest place at 6 MAD.
Their coffee tastes the way it does because of how they roast it, it’s a purposeful style thing (that tastes terrible and is horribly overpriced imo).
Their roasts are also darker than they say. Everything they have is dark roast, with their ‘blond’ coming in closer to a medium.
People go nuts over the sugar, caffeine and perceived status, it has nothing to do with the taste of the coffee. As a fellow black coffee drinker, my recommendation is to avoid Starbucks unless you happen to be near a union store where the coffee is guaranteed to taste more like freedom, but still like ashes soaked in oil.
In case you want more details: The way coffee roasting works is you move beans around in a real hot container, and you try to keep them to a specific point on a temperature graph at each moment as they roast. A different roaster would roast them a bit slower, but Starbucks just blasts those beans with everything they have, then they don’t stop until the beans are burnt. This gives them their “signature taste”. This is largely because of Howard Shultz, the guy who drove the company to be a cafe, and until recently the CEO. That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.
I’m from a country where we literally, grew, harvested, roasted and brewed our coffee. lol We had a tradition where the coffee HAD to be roasted and brewed on bone fire that is made out of certain shrubs stems. I know, it is crazy, but that is how it was there. Oh, and did I mention that we had to grind the coffee by hand? So, I have completely different standards/expectations when it comes to coffee, and that’s also why I drink it black. That is how we drank it. I now grind and brew my own coffee at home, and those starshit encounters happened only because I was traveling, otherwise, my coffee is all made at home.
That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.
I’m sure it’s also completely coincidental that burnt coffee tastes mostly same no matter where and when the beans came from. :-)
Also, why does a small cup of black coffee cost $2+
CEO needs another yacht, my dude.
Dark Roasted coffee is the only way Starbucks can be Starbucks.
Lighter-roasted coffee emphasizes origin flavors and i agree with you --generally tastes better and is more interesting.
But you can’t sell coffee like that in tens of thousands of coffee shops and have it remotely consistent.
Coffee growing from the same plot but on one side of a hill will taste different from the other side due to getting different quantities of sunlight. Complex origin flavors will always be the domain of small specialty coffee shops.
Starbucks has McDonalds-like consistency serving millions of customers a day and that’s only because they emphasize the flavors they can get consistently–roast flavors.
TL;DR The bigger the chain, the darker you have to roast. That’s just how coffee works.
Totally this.
Pretty much every chain cafe roasts their beans to an inch of their life, to give them a generic “coffee” flavour profile.Because god forbid coffee have even the slight variance of flavour.
To add to all this, if most of your customers are seriously there to taste their flavored syrups and milk of their favorite drink, you wouldn’t want to alter or even ruin that with unexpected, unique coffee flavors.
May as well add caffeine to a milkshake at that point …
Lovely use of the word “profit” in the title then switching it to “revenue” in the actual article. Different things.
So the lawsuit is about them declaring unspent gift cards as profit in their financial report? Way less shady than what the title suggests…
So it’s not a lawsuit (yet), it’s a complaint to the state attorney general of Washington accusing Starbucks of unfriendly consumer practices related to their gift cards, in part because they can recognize unspent gift cards as revenue, and also because it’s instant cashflow for them even if the accounting revenue lags behind. The need to come up with a calculation for how much deferred revenue to recognize can be abused by execs to nudge the revenue higher (and with no additional costs associated with it, profit as well) and thereby improve stock price and trigger bonuses and whatnot.
The actual complaint reads as a bit of pearl-clutching (“involuntary subscription” because customers don’t want to leave a balance OR talk to a real human at their local Starbucks!) , but on a the “death by a thousand cuts” model, yeah, I suppose Starbucks is being kinda dickish. The app doesn’t give you as many rewards if you pay with CC, buries the other payment options a couple of layers deep in a menu, doesn’t let you reload gift cards in increments equal to a purchase, doesn’t let you split payment methods, and sets a high default reload so (on iOS at least) it isn’t immediately visible that you even could scroll up to reload in smaller amounts.
It’s sort of garden variety asshole app design meant to soft-lock customers in, but it’s not really fraud in any meaningful way if someone is motivated. You add money, you get bitter overpriced coffee that your partner really likes for some reason. I prefer CHEAP, ACIDIC coffee because I did the pourover too fast on mediocre store-bought grounds that are too fine, LOL. Still, maybe worth a public scolding or some fines to get them to modify it so people can save a few bucks without diving into the finer nuances of their coffee app.
I have resolved to never again buy “points” of any kind, whether on an app or a game or a themepark or anything else. Either let me spend real money or I am going to assume it is a scam.
It’s only really a problem when you can’t buy the exact amount of points you need to make a purchase (which granted is most of the time). There’s legitimate reasons for using a “points” middle-man, though - for example, in a game where you can earn premium currency while playing, but also buy it; if you were making purchases directly, rather than buying the points you need, you wouldn’t be able to buy something using both earned and purchased currency; it’d be all or nothing.
This is definitely a very small minority, though, and 99 times out of 100, I agree with you, it’s a scam.
Except even then, they could just list both the real money cost and the in-game points cost. There’s no need for the points to be tied to the real money at all.
What if I want to buy something that costs 1000 points, which equates to $10, and I have 300 points in-game? I want to use those 300 points, but I want to cover the rest with $7 of real money. If they only list two costs - $10 or 1000 points - I can’t do that, but if they let me buy 700 points for $7, I can do it.
They could just list both the full price and the price - the ammount of points you have in dollars.
You don’t like buying 5% more points than you need for any purchase?
