Starbucks, fix the refill policy. I sort of swore to myself I’d never write about it again but it seems to be one of the more confused areas of Starbucks.
If you need a reminder of what the current refill policy looks like, read this blog post here. The refill policy causes confusion on both sides of the counter. I’ve seen confused partners. I’ve seen confused customers.
The fewer things that baristas have to police, the better. This is crucial. Just as police officers make mistakes in writing citations and making arrests, mistakes can made in enforcing the refill policy. And when baristas are completely in the right, sometimes they cause hard feelings in the customers who don’t understand the refill policy. (And why would they understand it? Most customers don’t spend time outside of Starbucks studying Starbucks policies.)
Within one week, I saw two episodes that reminded me that refill policy needs to be fixed. About one week ago, I walked into the Columbia Center Starbucks, ordered a beverage, and hung out for a few minutes awaiting my drink. As I waited, a colleague from my office came in, saw me, and we chatted for a moment before he ordered. I waited, planning to walk back to my office with my colleague. He approached the register. I was nearby. And I heard him say that he wanted a black tea refill. My ears piqued and I heard Maria, a partner who’s been at that store for years, politely tell my colleague, “I’m sorry that’s not a refill. Refills are for same store visits.” My colleague began to push back, “But I always get a refill in the afternoon…” I was nearby and so I spoke up, “Hey” I said, addressing my friend, “Maria is right. A Starbucks refill really is for same store visits.” The colleague knows my interest in Starbucks, and so he quieted and just paid for his black tea.
A few days ago, I was at a Starbucks in the downtown retail core of Seattle and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a customer clearly chewing out the store manager. I wasn’t close enough to hear what was going on, but I saw her pointing at her phone and squawking, “If I’m supposed to have a receipt, why wasn’t one sent to my phone?” Later, I learned from a friend that the conversation had been about the refill policy and the store had recently tried to implement the idea that a customer would have to have a receipt to receive a refill.
I like the current refill policy in terms of its generosity. But I completely support change too. If Starbucks wants to change the rules for the refill policy, I”ll go with the flow.
My proposal: Baristas shouldn’t have to be sheriffs of the refill policy. Often times, the baristas are right when they say, “That’s not a refill” but that confrontation never enhances the Starbucks experience. Your card should know when you qualify for a refill. Put a time limit on it (there isn’t one now) and tie it to the Starbucks card. Starbucks boasts billions loaded on that card and a significant portion of the transactions are via either the Starbucks card or mobile phone app payment. Maybe if the refill policy required the card, even more people would sign up.
All I know is that the refill policy could use some improvement. I’m not married to any one particular way how it should be fixed but I’m game to tie it strictly to the Starbucks card. I just know that the more things have a clean answer with a swipe of a card, and the fewer things policed by partners, the better. Howard just announced that he stepped into a role to work on digital innovation. I’m crossing my fingers that he and others at the headquarters have already rolled up their sleeves and started working on this.
Starbucks, please fix this. I assume that these kinds of scenarios described above, happen every where, not just in downtown Seattle.
Edit:
A free refill requires that a customer use a registered Starbucks card at the green level (or higher) of MyStarbucksRewards benefit.
A refill where the customer pays 54 cents (or some number close to that, depending on local tax) does not require any card.
This is one more area of confusion. Make it so you have to have the Starbucks card.
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The refill policy DOES require the Starbucks card. It’s a perk of having a registered Starbucks Card. When a customer pays with their Starbucks Card, it pops up on screen that they are eligible for an MSR Refill. When the customer comes back to get that refill, you ring in the drink and scan/swipe their Starbucks card again to bring the total to zero. The problem IS there is no time limit. So a customer can come back in the aftn for a “refill” when he paid for his coffee in the morning with his Starbucks card.
I like the time limit idea on the refill policy.
@Glen – A free refill requires a card at green level or higher. A refill where you pay 54 cents (or some number close to that depending on tax in your area) does not require the card. And this would be one more area of confusion. My proposal would be that you HAVE to have the card to receive any perk.
I completely agree! Some of the problem is that the refill policy is hard to find (if listed at all in our in store manuals). A few months back I received a call from my manager while I was working and she asked my to check our store computer for the policy. A former partner was at a starbucks out of state while he was attending his father’s funeral. He bought a latte first and wanted a coffee refill (which is allowed with the refill policy). They told him that wasn’t allowed since he bought a latte first. I tried to find where it was in the partner resource guide and beverage manaul and other documents but I couldn’t, if it is even listed.
If partners don’t know where to find the policy how can we be expected to have a united front and maintain consistency? If that means we change the policy then so be it. I whole-heartedly agree though, something needs to change!
I know this policy is a huge pain point…for partners and customers alike. I’ve felt pain, trust. I think the notion of time connected to the Starbucks card is a great option. It would certainly help with the “refill” in the drive thru issue.
@Melody-
I definitely agree that something needs to change in regards to the refill policy. Often times we will have regular customers who purchase their tea or coffee in the morning (who are gold card members) that try to continuously get “refills” throughout the day after leaving the store after each visit. Unfortunately we have had a bad spell of managers in the past and some let the customer get as many free refills as they wished since they were a regular customer. Honestly this is one of the most frustrating things I have encountered because it creates very awkward situations where the baristas know how the policy works but it isn’t always being followed. Luckily since then our manager has changed and they are fully aware of the actual policy. We have lost a few of hose regulars over that whole experience but I mean seriously I would hope that they understand it a little better than they claimed to. Anyway… Yes please change the policy! 🙂 I would love to have customers and baristas alike all on the same page.
Thanks for rewriting this topic, I really need some clarifications as my recent experience at my local Starbucks with refill made me more confused… I ordered a venti iced latte & asked for a hot brew coffee as free refill, the barista who helped me first said the refill is not free & require a chaege $0.54 for refill as my original order is not a brew coffee, I then mentioned that’s not what the Starbucks website said on the free refill policy, she replied saying since I originally ordered a Cold drink, therefore, I’m not allowed to get HOT brew coffee unless I provide my own cup that can withstand the heat of hot drink (as it will require her to use a separate new cup to put the hot brew coffee & it is not allowed per refill policy), I was so surprised there’s nothing detailed about this on the website for refill policy, so I ended up just get a Iced brew coffee. I’m a frequent customer & follow various Starbucks news/events on the web, I rarely ask for refill but I’m aware of the policy. Is this true, I have to bring my own cup in order to get HOT brew coffee refill if my original order is a cold drink? She also said I’m also not allowed to get HOT tea refill if my original order doesn’t have tea bag in it as the tea refill is just add hot water no tea bag included, what exactly is the policy on this (thought I didn’t ask for tea, but curious to know the answer)?
I was a partner for a few years and we were required to give a new cup with every refill. Something to do with sanitation I believe. However, no one knew anything about the breadth of the refill policy (ex: Iced latte first, hot coffee refill).
OH MY GOSH my least favorite thing about “being a Partner”…After 14 year you’d figure they’d do something to simplify the policy. Ummm, like, just give out a refill for heaven sakes. If you got a cup TODAY from Starbucks then let me just refill it for your so you can just go away…..happy! If a customer is abusing Starbucks on purpose then thats on them. Now-a-days I accommodate the customers refill first as I gently inform them of the policy while hand back off their refill. I figure they might want to abide by the rules…….eventually. LOL Oh ya and I love but hate the reusable cups for this reason.
Great blog melody ,
I really never use the refills . I don’t want to have to ask for the refill and I don’t know if that makes sence but I would rather just pay for a new drink. But still thanks for the info. I’m gonna look into it.
Thanks again Mel,
George
Melody, one of your posts have never made me cry before but this one did! I so agree with tying it to your card and having a time limit on it, this way it is all up to the computer. Also, what a great way to get more customers to sign up for MSR! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post!
@Melody, thanks for again taking on this subject of great passion to many customers and Partners.
Because this policy has been abused by customers and misinterpreted by Partners for many many years it is going to be a challenge to change the “culture”. On the surface the policy is very simple, why do both sides have to create confrontation and confusion.
@DadCooks – I think the refill policy creates confusion not because of anything intentional. It’s just the way the current refill policy is: it had a lot of room for confusion the way its currently written and each store may enforce it differently, creating more confusion.
@Patrick – Coffee Master – I figure that when someone signs up to be a barista they have a lot to do and arguing over the refill policy shouldn’t be one of them. Why add enforcement of a confused & ambiguous policy to a baristas lists of things to do? You’ve got better things to do with your time then argue with a customer over a refill, and more importantly, I don’t know any barista who wants to do that! Make it clean. If the card knows that a refill is available, it will be available. You can go back to what you enjoy as a barista then.
Melody I always think it is good to review this topic because as you have said there is so much confusion. Thank you. I do have a question though- What do you mean by having a time limit? I am not sure how I feel about that.
Thanks for bringing this up again. It’s a major point of confusion and there are always people ready to take advantage of a good thing.
So if you tie this to the card, there’s nothing to stop people from leaving the store and coming back an hour later and getting a refill, right? You’re suggesting eliminating the ‘same visit only’ part of the policy?
Purple1: The current refill policy as it stands has a time limit. You must stay in the cafe (or on the patio), and the refill has to be within 2 hours of your original purchase. The time policy is almost never enforced because it doesn’t usually have to be, and people aren’t going to nitpick if you’re sticking around the store for a while, anyway. So, having a “time limit” on the card would only further enforce the policy, and would potentially give people a way to leave (maybe run across the street and do some errands) and then grab a refill on their way home/to work for the day.
@Purple1 – When I say time limit, I’m thinking of something between one and two hours.
@SnowWhite – Yes and no. I’m not particularly sold either way. Your card should know some transaction history, so perhaps it could be tied to a purchase at a specific store. But perhaps it would be cleanest if it were a refill within one hour. The number of people who get to a second Starbucks within one hour is probably tiny. Let me be honest, I don’t have a good answer for sure on this issue.
@Jen – The Starbucks website on the refill policy doesn’t specify a time limit. I am easily persuaded that there should be one. But if there is one now, I think it should be written where customers can see it: http://customerservice.starbucks.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1882 – I mean agree with your logic totally. Having it tied to the card with a strict one hour time limit would give someone the chance to buy an iced tea, even run out to their car and get something, and come back into the store. But I’m not married to one particular answer here.
As I see it, Jen’s post is the actual problem. I don’t see this as a policy issue, I see this as a training issue. Partners make up rules all the time that do not exist in black-and-white. And for those saying they can’t find the policy, I’ll suggest you’re not looking hard enough. It’s in the Beverage Resource Manual under the heading “Purchasing Beverage Refills”. I suspect the POS knows how to handle this. Try and ring it up as a refill and swipe the card and see if the POS takes it. If it does, keep moving. If not, nope sorry, doesn’t qualify for a refill. Stop trying to ‘police’ the policy.
@SnowWhite: The POS actually doesn’t currently know whether or not a customer qualifies for a refill. We are having a problem with a few customers that are daily trying to take advantage of the refill policy by coming in with a very old, used cup and requesting a refill. If you ring in a ‘hot coffee refill’ on the POS and swipe their card (even though they’ve not purchased a coffee), it just gives them the refill. I agree that training issues contribute to confusion with partners and inconsistencies between stores, but the policy itself could stand to be adjusted. Its important we ‘police’ the policy in the meantime because there are far too many people that abuse it.
@Melody, I agree with what you’re saying, 100%!
I think I misstated my issue with this. My issue is not with ‘same visit only’. My issue is with ‘does this drink qualify for a refill’. I’ve seen far too many partners argue that you can’t get a refill on hot tea, you can’t get a new teabag if you get a hot tea refill, you can’t get a refill of hot tea if you first ordered a Frappuccino, etc. Because all of those are wrong per the policy, the POS does the right thing and allows it. And considering there is no time limit in the policy, that’s a moot point. The ‘same visit only’ seems fairly simple to me: you’re in the drive-thru? not eligible. You just walked in the front door? not eligible.
So I rarely comment here anymore since I have stepped out of the store manager role and am taking my life in a different direction, but I am sill a partner and in my experiences there are three types of “refill” customers:
1) A customer who has left the store and is clearly re-entering or who is obviously visiting for the first time and presents a visibly used/old cup and requests “just a refill of the Pike/dark/iced coffee/iced tea/” etc. I charge them full price (plus a 10-cent cup discount, even though I use a new cup…) and they may seem visibly surprised or confused but willingly pay the full price.
2) Same scenario, but the customer re-iterates to me, “oh, it’s a refill”. I’ll inform them of the refill policy and offer the cup discount. They pay, albeit begrudgingly.
3) Scenario #2 rarely plays out as I’ve written and most usually progresses to the this example: The customer invokes “The Other Starbucks” and how they “do it for them all the time”. It’s at this point that I usually give up and charge the refill price. These customers are almost always registered-card-users who are aware that refills are free with a swipe of their registered card. Those customers who do not use a Starbucks Card are more receptive to the “policy” and will pay the 53 cents without a fuss as they understand I’m already “bending the rules” for them by charging for a refill only.
Honestly at this point in my Starbucks life I am much more inclined to simply give customers what they feel they are entitled to rather than waste time and energy explaining a flawed policy that leadership endorses out of both sides of its mouth. By this I mean that while Cilff Burrows can make a video clearly articulating the finer points of the refill policy in NORTH AMERICA (not just the US, mind you–this is a MULTI-NATIONAL issue, people!!), we are also told to never make the customer wrong and to go above and beyond customer expectations.
So, what would you?
@SnowWhite – I think that to some degree, the current refill policy requires baristas to know who’s in their stores, because the customers who SHOULD hear a “no” are the ones who left and came back. Some of the problem is that so many stores are lax, that the customers who don’t know what the real policy is start to believe something like, “it’s a same day policy” and that informs their feeling that they should get a refill. Baristas have enough to worry about. Why add this on top of their load?
@Jacob – Thanks for weighing in. I’ve never seen that Cliff video, but Starbucks for its whole history has always been about ‘exceeding the customer’s expectations’ and so if that’s the kind of thing being said by leadership, no surprise. It just creates a mess. You’re right. At the same time baristas are being told to enforce this policy.
I don’t know what I would do. It would be tough.
There are some easy just say yes things: You want caramel walls in your Frappuccino? Sure. You want light ice in your passion tea? Sure. This just isn’t one of those easy situations, and I don’t know what I would do.
So isn’t the problem really with JSY? You cannot enforce both the refill policy and JSY. One has to trump the other. If JSY is the bottom line as far as the company is concerned, then we’re done here, right? I personally think JSY is a bad policy, I’d be more inclined to eliminate that before changing the refill policy. JSY just plays on the lie ‘the customer is always right’.
Another great topic, Melody. Just the other day on a Starbucks visit, I ordered a caramel flan latte as my original beverage and stayed in-store to do a little reading. Since the refill policy has always confused me, I pulled it up on my phone to check out what qualifies before I went up to the register. So, I took my empty cup with me, ordered an iced green tea as my free refill (originally paid with registered sbux card), and was told that only brewed coffee was part of the refill policy. I mentioned according to what was currently posted on the website, both brewed and iced tea and coffee were included and showed the barista my phone. The barista sincerely apologized and filled the order.
Like you said, I think the confusion occurs on both sides of the counter and could easily be avoided if the refill policy was visibly posted within the store. Maybe near the menu boards? I’m cool with them making whatever changes necessary to the policy as long as they don’t take it away or impose a limit!
I’ll give anyone refills on tea (hot or iced) and coffee (hot or iced) as long as you stay in the store (free vs $.54 is between you and your gold card). But the minute you try to come through the drive thru or if I see you park your car and walk in, then you’re paying full price baby.
So many times I’ve greeted people as they walk in for the first time and then immediately ring them up and they try to pull the “refill” switch on me. Nope! I find this to be something that happens more often in the late afternoon/evening. My evening partners just have a tendency to JSY to these people and now they’re convinced they should get it for free all day. It needs to be enforced across the board, regulars be damned. It’s not a refill if it’s your first one of the day!
We happen to be a sticker store. Don’t even let me catch you bringing in a hand-marked cup and then tell me it’s a refill.
It’s a shame. I try to be a nice person and JSY and go above and beyond, but the refill thing is my soapbox. (That and trying to order iced venti Americanos with no water, milk to the top).
I’m on the same page with @Jacob. At this point in MY Starbucks life. I think the company should just give out a refill for 50-whatever cents or for free with the card and be done with rules that NOBODY follows. Baristas dump enough coffee down the drain world wide who’s it going to hurt? A refill to whomever and whenever as long as your cup has our logo on it I’d rather just be done and fill your cup. I can assure you Starbucks won’t go out of business if they make it an open refill policy.
My only concern with this process is people take advantage. Let’s say a Trenta 31oz gr no h20 no ice and this person wants to re fill it 3-5 times a day for free! How does can we afford this. We enforce the re fill process at my store. And where can I go and just order what I want how I want it and then try to get re fills all day. Their needs to be a bigger enforcement on this process then there would be no confusion. I charge for extra Carmel, milk more then 4oz ect. I run a business not a hand out. I love what I do and my customers respect me more bc I follow the standard!
Right now I am having a huge problem with iced tea lemonade refills. The button on the POS for lemonade doesn’t include a charge, so customers are telling me to ring them up for an iced tea refill, add lemonade. I had this happen over a dozen times in one shift……. anyone else????
I personally would love to see the refill policy go away. If i really intended to drink Trenta amount of coffee, then I should order and pay for it at the start. This should be especially true for any drinks where “some assembly required” and there are labor and materials costs involved. I don’t expect my wine glass to be refilled for free when I to a restaurant.
A great customer experience does not mean allowing us to act immorally by bringing old cups in and getting refills. In fact, we as customers should all want to leave the store with no crisis of conscience from having “shoplifted” a drink. Baristas are busy working and changing shifts and shouldn’t have to guess if we are making a first time order or bellying up to the bar for a refill.
This is a business that I want to be around for a long time. There are so many perks with Stars, Treat Receipts, Sweet Treat Receipts, Birthday Drinks, etc. I am ok with the price I pay for my drink because I want baristas to have jobs. I could be like those poor people in Sochi with no access to any Starbucks! Sigh!
I’ve never been refused a refill of coffee or tea, including the shaken iced passion fruit flavor. Guess I’m not greedy, but if I leave the store and stay in the same complex I think I am still “in the store” in spirit.
Ya know Melody, I think we are more aware of this then most people and it isn’t really that big a issue. I work on the floor about 32 hours a week, and really, I spend maybe 5 minutes or less a week having to “deal” with the refill policy. The trick is my team KNOWS the policy, so no confusion around that, and things that aren’t refills aren’t refills. Grey areas? Just say yes.
I probably have a harder time trying to explain to people why their email is a coupon and they have to have their starbucks card. People even argue over not having a card, ignoring the fact that they only get those emails because they have registered a card in the past!
Ok I have a solution……open refill policy. WE ARE THE WORLDS BIGGEST COFFEE COMPANY KIDDIES. If you’re a store manager with that bad of a variance it’s not because of the bad refill policy and the customers that are “stealing” coffee. Just give out the darn coffee or tea/lemonade refill. The day Howard send me a letter to NOT make a customer feel good is the day I become the latte police.
I love your articles about the refill policy! As a partner who spent almost 6 years in a tourist location, we never really dealt with refills because everyone is foreign. 6 months in as an ASM my district manager moved me to a more “neighborhood” location catering to office workers and military families. I now experience refills all the time. Thanks to your articles the first thing I explain to a new partner training on the POS is the refill policy.
@SnowWhite – I’ve been thinking about your comment. It’s one of those things that on paper sounds good to do but I think in practice would fundamentally change Starbucks. The more I think about it, any brand that positions itself as a premium brand whether a great hotel, Nordstrom, or a number of premium brands has to have some form of Just Say Yes in their employees’ repertoire otherwise they’ll never manage the times of ambiguities very well.
Lots of people go to Starbucks and spend more on a latte ($4 to $5) than they would on a gallon of milk. I remember reading somewhere that the raw materials (cup, sleeve, milk) cost like 64 cents. People expect a great experience when they feel like it’s a luxury item. And there will always be moments where it’s an ambiguous situation as to what to do.
If you’re shopping at TJ Maxx you might expect a different level of experience than shopping at Nordstrom.
I easily can agree with you that many customers hear a “yes” when strictly speaking, the answer could have just as easily been a “no” (or should have been a “no.”). And there are plenty of times that “yes” fills in gray areas or keeps the experience a premium experience.
But I just don’t think you can blanket say, “get rid of just say yes” which does has a function and a place.
This is sort of the perfect example of how partners need to be empowered to do what’s best. Love this blog post:
http://www.jeffpearlman.com/have-a-beautiful-day/
@Melody
I just finished reading the blog post from the link you posted and I completely agree with the whole idea of it’s okay to be empowered to quickly make decisions. Honestly this is what #tobeapartner is all about so the JSY policy certainly does have a reason for its existence. Overall I think we just need a nationwide (worldwide) revisit on the issue with better communication on everyone’s behalf.
We could maybe even charge everyone .54 cents for a continuous cup of coffee (or tea) upon there initial purchase of the beverage if they feel they will be needing a refill and somehow indicate that they have a continuous cup of coffee and are inclined to get as many refills as they wish. This would only work for MSR members of course but I feel the card could track it and automatically keep the refill on there until the next day. I realize this also could be a bad idea and complicate other issues but I am simply throwing an idea out there. Maybe changing everyone the .54 would make up for the money lost over everyone’s multiple refills. Anyway just brainstorming! haha
I wonder if my speed of service score would go up if my Partners could eliminate the refill policy speech during a refill transaction. @Melody I love how you let your readers know how much confrontation our Baristas have to go through daily. Customers forget there IS a Partner experience involved here too! I’ve seen a lot of young Partners over the years have their spirit squashed by some person taking advantage of Starbucks and freak out on the Barista and say rudely “well the store on blahblahblah street does it” The list is long 3 shots in a Venti ice cup, charging for steamed milk, no smoking, no sleeping, extra Carmel, extra grams on the Clover (that’s the newest one) I just want to uplift peoples’ days and so do my Partners. Like I said above. Customers that like to get over on Starbucks the coffee karma is on them.
@Patrick I’m on my phone, sorry abrupt & sloppy. You bring up great points. SO true how wearing it is to have that confrontation often. It would start to feel like everyone wants a something extra. And extra grams on the Clover? Wow. You could end up with under extracted coffee!
I’ve always had a problem with ‘the customer is always right’ – never sat well with me. I’ve been teaching my team to look at it more as ‘it’s never worth it to publicly prove a customer wrong’ :). (Actually, it’s more like, there are very small numbers of times where it’s appropriate to prove the customer wrong).
And usually, it’s me, the SM, who will be having that conversation – not them.
I don’t pay them to be the refill police, or the caramel police etc. Especially if it’s a one-time situation – customer asks for caramel at the bar instead of the till, for example, we just say yes. Same customer does this repeatedly? We simply ask them at the till when we see them – they either say yes, and we charge them, or they say no, and then I keep tabs on them at the bar 🙂
This is how we approach the refill policy as well – first time? Just say yes, don’t hold up the line – I’m a busy store, I’m not likely to notice whether you stayed or not. Frequent occurrence? Warrants a quick refresh on the refill policy – ‘refill prices apply if you purchased your *original* beverage in *our* store, and stayed in the store from then until now…do you qualify for a refill?’ 8/10 times, we’ll get sheepish looks from customers who’ve merely been trying to get stuff for free but don’t mind paying :). Those other 2 times, we flag them for a little convo with yours truly.
I’ve only ever had one person truly be unreasonable about the policy – insisted the the perk of the gold program was that you didn’t pay for coffee, only the specialty drinks. Even after showing him the policy, and having him chat on the phone with my DM, he insisted I honour his perception of the refill policy. I finally had to tell him that the written policy, exactly as written, was how we would be proceeding at this store, and if that didn’t work for him, he should consider taking my store off the list of the ones he frequented.
If Starbucks were to change the refill policy, I believe it should be something simple – either attached to the card with a time limit or something like – if it’s in a for-here cup, it qualifies, as you clearly stayed *in* the cafe 🙂
@jocelyn – I *never* let customers tell me how to ring in their beverage. If there’s a button for their beverage, that’s how I’ll be ringing it in, as that’s how those who decided on the pricing chose for it to be priced.
Tea lemonades don’t count as refills, and I would cheerfully but firmly tell them they can pay 2.46 for a passion tea lemonade, or 0 for a passion tea. Alternatively, I’d cheerfully charge them for a tall cup of lemonade, and then they could have passion tea lemonade to their heart’s content.
I agree completely. I remember trying to get an iced green tea refill (I had purchased a Refresher as my first drink) only days after reading your last refill policy post, but they claimed that it did not count.
The refill definitely should be better integrated with the Starbucks Card, which would clear up confusion so quickly; if the Barista insists it won’t work, just ask them to swipe the card and watch their reaction when it does. All too often I try to use my free reward on a $6 Evolution Fresh juice, but the Barista claims that it will not work, so I simply ask them to try the card.
My store has a significant amount of “refill traffic” that I know for a fact doesn’t qualify. But when other baristas are willing to give refills, it makes for an incredibly inconsistent experience. While I like the idea behind the refill policy, I think it would help TREMENDOUSLY to have some basic signage that’s just a permanent fixture at the POS. A little sign that states the basic tenets of the refill policy would make it easy for a barista to point it out and say, hey this is Starbuck’s refill policy, I’m really not able to give you a refill when I just saw you walk in the door. It would also let customers point it out if a barista doesn’t understand what is and isn’t considered a refill.
@MistoGirl – I agree with you that some signage would help a lot. Good idea. Once in a while though, I’ve seen stores print out their own interpretation of the refill policy and post it as if it were the real thing. This only causes a mess. I could support the SSC creating some standard signage for all their stores. ?
I mean, there’s so much standardized signage, it couldn’t be that hard for them to just add it to the packages. Think menu boards, the No Smoking signs, the Opportunity to Be a Partner signs…. you see those nearly everywhere. It would make it seem less like a personal refusal and more like you’re just doing what you’re supposed to do.
I mean, there’s so much standardized signage, it couldn’t be that hard for them to just add it to the packages. Think menu boards, the No Smoking signs, the Opportunity to Be a Partner signs…. you see those nearly everywhere. It would make it seem less like a personal refusal and more like you’re just doing what you’re supposed to do.
@Melody and @MistoGirl YES! they had them in the late 90’s early 2000’s when I just started with Starbucks they were on the side of the pastry case visible to everyone. Alas, that was a time in history when we were “tiny” Starbucks and I could count the stores in Orange County on my fingers and toes and the barista next to me (like 42, the barista next to me had an extra finger and toe…kidding lol) Bring back the sign!!!!!!
There’s this one customer at my store that gets a venti green tea. Buts it’s 3/4 green tea 1/4 lemonade and I’m told to always charge it as just a green tea. He comes in constantly and while he’s in there he gets 3,4,5 refills on his gold card. So he gets free refills! I find this so dishonest and cheap because basically he’s getting away with a couple GTLs (if you add up the lemonade from each 1/4) every time he visits. Everyone in the store calls it a splash of lemonade (and he calls it a splash too) when it is clearly not a splash at all!
Just stumbled across your blog while browsing the web.
Anyways, as a former Store Manager who has seen several changes to the refill policy, I had had it with the confusion. Then throw in good ‘ol Howie’s “just say yes” mantra. It wasn’t fair to my partners and it was tiresome haven’t to spell things out for customers, then having my partners get the raw deal when things changed or customers tried to intimidate/threaten/whine/etc…
So, any store I managed, we adopted our own refill policy. It was always communicated to the customer that it was our store and our store only and it wouldn’t always work in other stores. Luckily, both stores I managed were very neighborhood centric with no highway or tourist traffic.
If a customer brought a cup up from their visit at our store, or a cup in from another store they got refill price. We were a marker store, so if it had sticker label with the same date on it, refill price. Customer came in in the morning, went to work, stopped back by on the way home, refill price.
Ultimately, we would throw more coffee away than what we were charging for refills, and sometimes the same with teas. Doing it this way, alleviated a lot of headaches on both sides of the counters and those refill customers, well, they’d buy a lot of retail or food items. That and we were “their Starbucks” and any outsider giving us crap, they would handle.
Oh, and it was a store policy of mine that first responders/emergency personnel and military (had to be in uniform) didn’t pay for non-espresso beverages and would get discounts on espresso beverages, and food.
Then again, I was the “renegade” store manager that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the convoluted policies that changed more frequently then someone’s underwear. My partners and customers came first.
I left the company last month for an opportunity that gives me more time with my family, but my SO still works for the company and it is as convoluted as ever.
Oh, just to be clear regarding my previous post…the refills only applied to iced/hot coffees, and iced/hot teas..including the tea lemonade. Not the espresso beverages.
If the customer had a hot tea, and still had the tea bag(s), we would just top them off with hot water..no charge. Tea bags were still usable.