The Starbucks “12 days of gifting” feature a discounted or promotional offering December 1st through December 12th. Tomorrow is the 12th, and it is by far the best of the “12 days” promotion. If you are a coffee lover, you will love this. Starbucks is offering a unique tumbler that comes with the benefit of free coffee refills during the month of January next year. The tumbler will be $19.95, and then in January you bring it back to Starbucks and you can fill it with whatever brewed coffee happens to be offered. It’s not clear to me exactly which coffees will be brewed next month, so I imagine you may be offered Pike Place Roast, a blonde coffee option such as Veranda or Willow blend, or possibly a bold coffee like Verona, if it is available. The catch is that you cannot get a free Clover brewed cup of coffee in the tumbler, nor can you get a free pour over in the tumbler.
I really like this idea! I know a number of Seattle stores that offer bold coffee close to all day, and I’d fill it with blonde-roast coffee too. Okay, I’ve even been known to drink a cup of Pike Place Roast in a pinch.
There are limited supplies of the tumbler, so get to Starbucks first thing on Monday morning to get the tumbler! I can’t wait.
There is one more aspect to this promotion that is important: It is good for the environment to use your own cup, mug, or tumbler. “Reducing consumption” is the way to prevent our landfills from filling up with paper cups. Recycling paper cups is only a half-truth that it is a “green” thing to do. Not all containers labeled “recycling” actually end up being recycled. A small percentage will be unusable because too much contamination by oily foods, or mixed in non-recyclables. Even when a cup is recycled, the overall energy required is very large: Recyclables must be cleaned, sorted, trucked to a recycling plant, re-manufactured into something new, and then re-distributed into the stream of commerce, very often via more big trucks on the road. The small amount of effort to wash a tumbler is negligible compared to the energy outgo of manufacturing something anew from a paper cup.
It has been well over a year since I have talked about re-usable tumblers and their importance for the environment. Here’s an old blog article from early 2010 on this topic:
2009 Shared Planet Update on Reusable Tumblers at Starbucks.
How did everyone like the other 12 days of Christmas promotion items? This is a great promotion. Get your tumbler, and make it habit to use it all the time. 🙂
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That is one great offer! I won’t mind bringing the tumbler along with me everywhere, a free grande brewed coffee for the whole month just sounds so good. Is it a new tumbler? Anyway, don’t forget to get it, guys!… =)
It’s too bad my husband’s job moved to the far end of town from Starbucks. He used to get coffee every morning on his way to work. This would have been a great deal for him!
They’re doing this in the UK, but only in a few stores, most do not seem to be taking part in any of the offers. None near me are. I may find one so I can get a tumbler at half price.
I have to admit that this whole promotion was not really promoted in the store and I think around here many might have missed it. What kind of promotion instore did SB have for this 12 day of gifting?
I saw the tumblers in my local SBX (QA Hill) and while they’re cute I wish they were the 20oz size. I always get a Venti since the cost between a grande and that isn’t much and their only option for the Venti in a travel mug is the stainless steel one.
My store had nothing promoting this event that I could see.
The tumbler promotion is scheduled for the 12th, but I posted this today so more people will see it in time – maybe tomorrow there will be obvious in store promotion.
The interesting thing is that I have not seen any instore promotions for any of the twelve days of gifting. You would think the stores would promote this?
Melody, this is territory SBUX has been before. To celebrate its 30th Anniversary in 2001, SBUX sold a special tumbler for $30 and offered free refills for an entire month for those who bought the special tumbler. (If my memory is right, this offer was only for brewed coffee. However, stores gave customers free refills for Lattes and such.) Figuring out the ROI on the program proved difficult. The consensus was SBUX didn’t lose money nor did the company gain money. Interesting to see this idea come back 10 years later.
I would suggest coming in early to get this deal if you’re interested. My store (slightly greater than average sales volume) only received 10 of these to sell. Most of my early morning (we open at 4am) customers are drip coffee drinkers, and enough of them are interested that I’m pretty sure we’ll be sold out by 7am.
Thanks for the great post Melody!
I thought the tea gift pack wasn’t too bad. Today’s mugs are good for coworkers who like coffee, and the Via deal a few days ago was also pretty good, if I had known about it earlier in the day – not big enough to make a special drive over there. Looks like I have an incentive to get out of bed at 4:30 in the morning.
@CalWatch – I thought the Via promo was good too, and bought some Christmas Blend Via. I didn’t realize that there are so few tumblers! I will be out of bed early tomorrow too – I’m glad Chris W, gave us the heads up on that.
This doesn’t excite me as I drink lattes and cappuccinos and only drink SBs drip coffee at home when I brew it. If it was for the specialty drinks I would be in line to get one. My favorite promo deal was the 1 lb. bags of Christmas Blend for $9.95. I bought ten bags. Last year they did buy one get one free but I guess they lost money on it and this year decided to reduce the price by $5 a bag instead. I love the 12 days of sharing and the only other day I spent money was buying the cranberry bliss bars at half off to share with my coworker and family. I wish SBs would have MORE sales throughout the year but since they have such an addicting product they don’t have to so I appreciate these sales during December and love the TEXT reminders daily.
I’ll try to be bright and early – sounds like a good deal! Hope my store gets a few more than 10 tumblers though!
Well it’s Christmas and I am just a kid at heart. The texts for the 12 Days were fun for me to get. I took advantage of the Cranberry Bliss Bars, Whoopie Pies and I stocked up on Christmas Blend Via. I love the tumbler idea but I rarely drink brewed coffee when I am not at home, so I will probably pass on this deal.
Glad you made a big mention about using tumblers! Melody, I see so many of the same people every single day buying the same coffee every single day and most never bring a reusable cup!
I’ve enjoyed getting all the direct message heads up I signed up for with Starbucks. The 12th day special they have is my favorite. I’m thinking I may need to get this tumbler. For someone that drinks coffee everyday it’s an EXCELLENT deal. I like the tumbler too 🙂 As far as bringing in my own mug/cup/tumbler, I have one of their 20 oz. stainless steel double insulated tumblers. I purchased it when I first started school about a year ago and even in the middle of last winter my coffee stayed HOT (WIN!). The tumbler is all beat up but still in good condition for my coffee keeping purposes and I’m thinking maybe I will let it rest a little bit in January 😉
Plz show us when you get that tumbler, and I think you will wait jan. very much 🙂
ok I am not a coffee drinker but my husband is a big coffee drinker and today we had such a nice experience at our local SB. One of the partners run over to me and said you have to get this tumbler for your husband because he drinks alot of coffee. She explained to me all the benefits (even though I knew about it) and was so excited. I got one. There were only two left. Later on she came over to us and told us how much we would be saving with getting. She is one of the best partners at the store.
You can also get the tumbler online for $19.95 plus $3 shipping. It seems like you can get as many as you want online. My local store, for which I seemed to be the first person there at 5 am in the morning, had a half dozen of them out, with the “12 days of gifting” display still showing the holiday mugs. Yesterday I stopped by another Starbucks at 10 pm and got the last two holiday mugs so I guess they were popular.
Showed up at local Starbucks in Falls Church, VA, at 7:10 a.m. to buy the tumbler and get the deal. None in stock, no rain check. What does this tell you about Starbucks?
@johnmoore I didnt remember that – so long ago.
This morning I got to 4th and Union Starbucks at about 6:40 and got their last one. I knew that store has a slower morn rush, so I figured I might be able to get one there. Im on my phone – sorry sloppy.
Online sold out… Made all the deal sites this morning.
3 of us regulars just got the last 3 at my favorite Starbucks this morning.
How much you want to bet that these mugs start appearing on eBay and CraigsList soon.
Most stores in my area are out. I bought two but wanted another. 🙁
Off topic, but Melody do you know where to get Verona K cups? I didn’t see any at Walmart. Not sure if you spotted them somewhere – not on keurig.com yet.
@Diele. Costco has the Verona K-cups.
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11683004&search=Verona&Mo=4&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=Verona&Ntt=Verona&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
I have seen them in Costco stores too.
@Diele — Costco has the best deal on Verona K-cups, in-store or order online.
Amazon.com also has them, but a lot more expensive (also be sure you are buying a fulfilled by Amazon if not from Amazon directly).
Target and Walmart have been very spotty on supply and selection. Bed Bath & Beyond are supposed to have them, but I have not been by there recently.
Recommendation, IMHO — you will be disappointed in the flavor and body of Verona K-cup if you brew it on any size other than the 6 oz. size.
I now return you to the topic at hand 😉
My SBUX was out of the tumblers but is having a buy one get one sale on the cold drink cups both today and tomorrow. They had the tall color changing straw ones as well as the grande and venti sizes.
The cold cups are supposed to begin tomorrow as bogo…
Thanks everyone! Found them at Cosco and will try the lower setting. I planned on it since I want to add cocoa powder and a touch of milk. Verona + chocolate makes my heart sing.
Literally, there is a daily deal until Jan. 2 this year. I can’t wait to see the end of year sale. Definitely going to entice people to use gift cards. The next deal days is Last Minute Thoughtful Gifts.
We were sold out by 8 AM! We had 12 to sell, and once I started mentioning all the perks, tumblers just flew into people’s hands! One guy even bought 3 of them and handed them out to random people in the store as gifts. So generous!!
@BCav – That is so cool about the guy who bought 3 of them! Though I hope they landed in the hands of coffee drinkers. 😉
@Diele – if you have a Trader Joe’s near you, they have a fantastic sipping chocolate that they only carry during the holidays. It’s in a brown and orange tin and is fantastic. Try mixing some of that with some of their coconut milk (vanilla flavored or regular) with your Verona!
The twitter conversations around this tumbler are interesting. Lots of stores were out by the wee hours of the morning! Also, they are popping right and left already on ebay! Very easy to find on ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STARBUCKS-COFFEE-TUMBLER-31-Days-Free-Brewed-Coffee-January-2012-/220913708691?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item336f7bae93
That is going to be a hot ebay item all month!
The Starbucks on QA Hill still had some as of this afternoon. I wonder if the SBUX within grocery stores would still have them since they get less traffic?
My store sold out by 10:30 this morning! Pretty crazy. We had people asking all through the afternoon if we had more.
I liked this promo idea but had no intention of buying the tumbler. Then I ended up at a Safeway grocery store around 2:30pm which has a SBUX inside and they still had three tumblers so I felt obligated to get one knowing how good of a deal it was. The girl said they had about a dozen to start the day and people were calling to ask her to hold one, which she could not do. I’m still deciding whether to keep it or give it as a gift to a coffee-drinking friend.
Bcav- that was a great story to hear! It’s nice to hear stories of people still doing nice things for no reason or expecting anything in return! My regular store still had a few on Monday morning when I arrived, not sure how quicly they sold…I didn’t have a chance to get by there today.
Hope there are more deals daily throughout December!
@Sandra – I’ve been wondering if there are more coming. I was at one Starbucks and saw a little paper card advertising specials, and it listed several more than 12 of them! Does anyone reading this know what is coming?
I think more are coming. I saw signage to advertise it again. I will look tonight. I was in a mad dash to set it up yesterday around 9am when it should have been set up the night before.
I was the nearest Starbucks to me (in UK) today and it appears they did this weeks ago.
So I didn’t get my tumbler 🙁
If you missed the tumblers, you might want to try a licensed store (Sbux in Kroger, Target, etc) in your area. I stopped by Kroger yesterday to pick up a few things for dinner and saw that the Starbucks there still had 9 tumblers!
@Melody
The 12 days of gifting is over, but there are still going to be several more different deals in the coming weeks. None of them is the tumbler though 🙁 Our store actually didn’t sell out the day of – we had three left of the 30 I had originally (and I can see I was very lucky, as many stores in my district got 6 or 10) – but I managed to sell them to a couple very deserving regulars this morning who were stoked that for the month of January they can come see us but pay nothing 🙂 February will be a rough month for them though, ha ha!
This is obviously a nice promotion but I have to admit its unlikely we will participate. Usually we are terrible at remembering tumblers and when we go to Starbucks as a family we get here cups for our treats. I love here cups 🙂
VERY unhappy! The largest Starbucks in Missouri only received 6 & were sold out by the time my barista clocked in for work! I called & no rainchecks – even for shareholders!
For me, this promotion has now had the opposite experience of what I think they intended. I didn’t realize the tumblers would be so very limited in availability, and this was a day I was heading out of town, so I didn’t make it to my neighborhood SBUX until I was headed out of town late in the morning. They informed me they’d sold out before 8 am. I then began calling area stores in search of one, and finally found one at a “fake” SBUX (licensed concept at a college), where only one person in the store seemed to know about the promo. I was happy to grab the last one, and they even offered me a free fill with purchase, which was quite nice. On the road, I found two more in a much smaller town at a Target and got those for friends.
Now that I’m actually using the tumbler, I realize the coffee SBUX is now serving is so horrific that I will likely never buy drip coffee there again after this month. Here, it’s Italian Roast every day at every location (until they stop brewing it at 10 or 11 am), whereas in the old days serving ITA as COD would probably have been grounds for partner termination or at least a write-up. Somehow what was once forbidden by company policy is now encouraged. I understand that this is to longer the COGS by using low-quality beans and over-roasting them in an attempt to hide the inferior quality. This is completely different from the company we all used to know and love.
The only acceptable brewed coffee is now Pike Place, a blend which most partners (and customers) won’t touch. I was also in that category until I realized the terrible quality of the alternative. Now I am tolerating Pike Place since it is “free.” But really, it’s not free at all, since it can require driving to multiple locations to find Pike Place that actually tastes drinkable. Yep, who knew different stores brew it differently? That’s what we’ve now discovered. A friend and I actually went from one company-owned location directly to a “fake” SBUX after realizing what we’d been served was completely unacceptable. Sure enough, the “fake” location served much better-tasting Pike. But really, it’s like taking medicine. Actually, I realized it’s much like drinking Keurig-brewed coffee (not specifically SBUX K-Cups, as I haven’t tried those). It tastes like coffee you’d find brewed in a giant percolator at a church.
Incidentally, the expensive tumblers are of very poor quality. They leak profusely, do not keep the coffee hot very long at all (about like a paper cup), and must be hand-washed, whereas the sturdier and less expensive tumblers of the past could be washed in a dishwasher. As I write this, I realize it may just make sense to return my used tumbler for a refund at Target and stop trying to drink drip coffee at SBUX altogether. Regardless, I’ll be taking a LONG break from patronizing the company. It’s pretty clear that the standards of old are long gone, and they’ve given up the drip market to McDonald’s (which apparently has better coffee, though I haven’t tried it). Ironically, the company that inspired so many to stop brewing at home is probably the same reason many have now returned to that method. What a shame!
So far this tumbler has been pretty nice. (Except for having to explain how the discount works to some baristas and the way the damp nub on the flip-up top hits my nose when I take a drink) Cleaning it with a bottle brush is a snap. Not sure if I will use it after January though, or go back to my old tumbler…
@Carl: If you weren’t already drinking the drip coffee, then you probably shouldn’t have started because of the tumbler. The Starbucks stores I frequent usually have the Pikes and a bold pick that they serve all week. Sometimes that pick is Italian Roast and that stinks (because it cannot be properly sweetened with sugar), but serving a pick for the week has been the practice for a while.
“You want good coffee? Add sugar. You want great coffee? Get a french press.” -Cervantes