Keeping up on Starbucks news doesn’t have to be hard. But it is ever-changing. One minute, Starbucks is buying Teavana. The next minute, the conversations are about the Evenings Starbucks stores. At the end of the day, if you really want to keep up with Starbucks news, you’ll have to look at blogs and other news sources and then keep looking at them frequently. It doesn’t work to just read the official blogs one time.
There are a few tools and sites to simplify the process – no need to try to search and filter through 20 repetitive news articles that came straight from a Starbucks press release.
Here are my top 5 tips for keeping up on all things Starbucks:
1. Read the official Starbucks blogs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that there is any way to subscribe to that link! But I go back to it often for lots of official Starbucks information.
2. Subscribe to the Starbucks newsroom alerts – I’ve been subscribed so long, that I’m having some trouble remembering how I signed up. I think this link here allows for email registration. This is incredibly valuable. You’ll be the first to know Starbucks breaking news. I recall that when the press release about Starbucks buying Teavana was released, I was standing at a Starbucks over a lunch hour, reading email from my phone. A few hours later, it was starting to be in the news everywhere. You too will be the first to know when you start getting your Starbucks press release emails.
3. Establish a Starbucks “Google Alerts” – This too is an incredibly valuable tool for monitoring what Starbucks is doing. Where it says “search query,” put in “Starbucks,” and then select options on how you want receive the content. I get one email a day with “everything.” What Google does is filter and search the day’s news for high-page-ranked content that is highly relevant to Starbucks. You’ll get a few mainstream news articles, a few blog articles, and even a few Starbucks press releases now and then. It’s fantastic. You’ll always know what’s the latest Starbucks buzz.
4. Like the Starbucks Facebook page – I have to admit, I only peek at the Starbucks Facebook profiles sporadically. I tend to be inconsistent in how I use Facebook. Of course, lots of people love Facebook, and getting the latest from the Starbucks profile in your stream is one more way to keep up with Starbucks information.
5. Follow Starbucks on Twitter – I’m more of a fan of Twitter than Facebook, so I’m a little biased towards this option.
As a bonus tip for keeping up on Starbucks news, I think you should “like” or subscribe to this blog! LOL.
If you are a partner reading this article, then I’d say that the “portal” is one of your best sources for information. I don’t know what you’ll find there, but I’ve heard about it over and over again as the partner place to go for current Starbucks information.
I’ve been meaning to write something like this for a while, and then a conversation (about the Vanilla Spice Latte) with a barista at the Westlake Starbucks tonight (12-19) inspired me to throw this blog article together quickly. I wrote this super fast, so please excuse the typos and grammar mistakes. Hope this helps you keep up on Starbucks news!
This is an OPEN THREAD. Feel free to talk about anything Starbucks-related in it!
(I added a Buy Me a Cup of Coffee page. If you appreciate what I do here, and having been doing for 3 years on this site, and you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee, I’d be forever thankful.)
(Image from the Wikipedia Commons)
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Melody nice collection of sites to see SB news. Just curious with all these sites can you say that news coming from them is more than accurate? Enjoy the coffee I sent you! So deserve it. BTW are you going to have an Open post soon?
@purple1 – Yes – I think the accuracy is better using the tools above. You hear from official sources, and the Google alerts pull in the better news sources. As to open thread, …. I forget about that now then! Good idea! I’ll make this an open thread! And thank you for buying me a cup of coffee!
Melody in the last several days or so it seems sort of odd to be that stores in the same district have been having issues getting food items. I understand that every store draws from different demographics and the size of each store is different but it so surprises me that those in charge seem baffled by it all. I asked the SM at my local store where the snowmen cookies had gone. Have not seen them in about a week or more. He sort of did not know how to answer where they were but could only say probably they are no longer sending them out. Went to the my other local store where I had gotten the peppermint graham crackers and there were the snowmen cookies in great supply. I guess my question is when partners order don’t they request what they are low on and if that is the case why are they not getting the snowmen cookies as an example? Obviously, these were selling.
I can answer the snowman cookie question. For a little while, they were unorderable because they were so popular. They’ve been back in stock (at least in my distribution centre) for about a week, but there was an item in our inventory system letting us know that holiday food was going to start to be unavailable soon. If your peppermint graham store had a lot of excess snowman cookies, or ordered up extra right away when they saw that notice, that’s why they still have some (and why I do too :))
As to ordering when we’re out, we do try – we place food orders 2 days in advance, and well, customers are not always predictable. At this time of year, in a mall, I have the *easiest* time ordering food – I just order lots of everything. And everything sells. During the year, with my wildly shifting customer base, I find that something that was popular one day/week, is not the next, and I’m constantly having to change what I order/suggest an alternative.
Melody – good compilation, thanks.
There is a way to subscribe to Starbucks Ideas In Action Blog, it has an RSS Feed symbol just under the Most Recent heading RSS (link embeded for you).
RSS feeds can be set up in your browser, email client, or a dedicated RSS Reader like FeedDemon (which I use). Personally I find the standalone FeedDemon to work best as I subscribe to a lot of feeds and that would slow down a browser.
Don’t forget the business side of Starbucks. Look at the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Just search for Starbucks or SBUX on these pages.
@DadCooks – Thanks for the info. My goal to suggest ways that news come to you, rather than you having to go find it. I agree about the WSj & Bloomberg being great sources – though I find that’s the kind of thing that Google Alerts will usually pick up, making it a little easier to follow.
Actually, I’ve gotten complaints from people that my own blog doesn’t have an RSS feed. I’m really low tech!
Have a great day!
Thanks for sharing! Regarding point 1, the posts can be subscribed to via RSS or ATOM.
I am Starbucks news junkie so thank you for the links. I will admit I get most of my news from your lovely blog and I love reading and sharing info via the comments section too.
Right now there is a sale from Dec. 20th through the 25th as the 1 lb. bags of Christmas blend coffees are $9.95 a lb.
@Sandra – Thank you for being a regular reader! Actually, I wrote another blog article last night, and part of what I wanted to do was make sure people knew about Christmas Blend beng on sale. Guess you’ll see something new soon!
As a SBUX Rewards member, I do opt-in to the ‘Starbucks email newsletters and promotions’. Second, Twitter helps too.
It is interesting to think about how we get SB news not only for the customer but for partners. I know partners have options that a customer does not have, but in a conversation last night with a partner I still see weak links in the line of communication. I was talking with him about the 10 star Jan promotion connected with the movie sweepstakes and free drink. He looked at me like he was totally confused because he was. He said he had no idea this existed and did not read anything about it. We chatted a bit about the lack of communication that prevented partners from getting some information. Has anyone else found that their partners at their stores had no idea about this promotion?
@purple1 – I have come to the conclusion that Starbucks doesn’t have time to tell partners everything that is going on – the problem is that any given time, Starbucks is doing a 1000 things: Promos, test items, international offerings, opening new stores, opening concept (emerging brands) stores, and it just goes on and on. And, what I find is that most partners don’t take time outside of work to read up on what Starbucks is doing – which is sort of why I made the list of links above – I thought it would encourage people (customers & partners alike) to easily have some resources.
It definitely happens to me that I meet partners where it at least feels like I have quadruple the information about Starbucks in my head than what they seem to present with. That may not be true, but it can feel that way. I listen to all the investor calls too through http://investor.starbucks.com and that provides a wealth of information as to what Starbucks is doing. Fundamentally, making a great beverage and being friendly is absolutely first in my book. But after that, I meet partners who don’t realize that Starbucks owns Teavana, La Boulange, or Evolution Fresh, who don’t know much about the rewards – And it seems like that extra stuff simply comes from studying the brand on your free time.
A lot of partners didn’t join Starbucks because they were interested/passionate about the brand. They joined because they like coffee/heard it was a good place to work/knew someone who knew someone etc. So, they’re definitely not going to take the time to do research outside of work. And at work, I for one, filter what information they do hear because, as you pointed out, there are thousands of things going on at one time. I don’t always make the right call – sometimes there are promos happening in the US that I haven’t shared with the team, and we get a tourist who is wondering why we’re not doing this thing or another.
The acquisition of La Boulange & Evolution Fresh is immaterial to Canada for the most part, as it will be ages before we see the fruits of those relationships, so I’m wary of piling too much information on their plates that doesn’t matter to their daily jobs. I do however, try to remind them that simply because they haven’t heard of a promo, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in some form somewhere, or might potentially be from an external source (Living Social, credit card company etc.) and instead of saying no, we try to find out more about it and see how we can ensure a great experience for them. If they know that, then their lack of knowledge shouldn’t impede their service 🙂
@Rebecca – You must be an amazing store manager. Your every comment on this site is just 100% right on.
Melody and Rebecca thanks for your comments. I absolutely agree and support the idea that I would prefer having a partner engage with a customer and provide stellar service than know about every single promotion or new acquisition. Yes, it is about the customer service!
The January 10 star promo may have been targeted.
In my family with 4 Gold Cards, only 2 of us got the promo email.
Now go figure this demographic mix; I am a senior citizen daily drip coffee drinker occasional food purchaser, and my 20-something Daughter is a daily fancy beverage drinker frequent food purchaser. We got the promo. My Wife and Son are occasional variable all around, seems marketing would want to incentivise them but they did not receive the promo.
As Rebecca and Melody have already stated, Starbucks has numerous promotions and events which a lot of times overlap with others. Just scrolling through some of the recent posts on Melody’s blog can give one an idea of how many things that Starbucks is promoting, and it is a rather daunting task to keep up with everything in addition to the other tasks that need to be done at work.
Personally, I am passionate about my job, the partners I work with, and customers that I have a privilege to serve, so it is not an issue at all for me to check up on Starbucks news and passing along any relevant information to my partners and customers.
@Melody – thank you for the compliment 🙂 I’m not amazing – I make my fair share of mistakes both on and off the floor. You can confirm that with my partners, haha. But I firmly believe in the ‘lens of humanity’ Howard always speaks about – if I can look at the situations I come across daily, with partners and customers, through that lens, I will hear what they’re really saying to me, and be able to respond to that, instead of just “Sorry, our refund policy is this. We can’t help you.” or “You don’t have enough vacation time – you can’t go to your best friend’s wedding”
I also used to be a teacher, and training people is my passion – I love to see that ‘aha!’ moment, and I’m definitely a big proponent of ‘teaching a man to fish’ as opposed to ‘giving him a fish’ – hence why I’ll spend sooo much time training them how to look at the big picture of what’s happening instead of just the one customer that’s standing in front of them – hopefully it’s a skill that will enable them to be better at life too 🙂
Dad Cooks interesting about the promo target and your family. I know they target certain customers, but for some reason I assumed this 10 star promo was sent out to everyone. I would love to know how they target the different customer bases. I still would love for them to do focus groups at the local level with the DM and SM present. The information they could get would be amazing- in my opinion!
re: the 10 *star* challenge. I alerted a few of the partners that I see regularly about it and, now having seen and received the “reward” on MSR, with its ring ‘code’, I realize when it comes to the *star* rewards, the partners don’t always need to know. Sometimes it doesn’t affect them at all….recently that bonus star promo? it wouldn’t have affected the partners whether we got an extra *star* or not. Same thing with the 10 *star* challenge except with this one, a customer needs to be able to redeem the reward, so it will affect them. None of the partners I talked with knew anything about it. (not surprising) Also not surprising is the whole lack of email announcements that Sbux (or MSR) says it will send out, ie: when a ‘reward’ is earned. For me, those are ~3days behind, if I get one at all. Same thing with the 10 *star* deal, when it was over, there was an email about ‘yay! you did it’ and that an email would follow with how to redeem. I did see (on 2/3 or 2/2) the ‘reward’ on my MSR accnt on the calendar page. I check that regularly but a lot of people don’t. I don’t know, you snooze you lose I guess. On the other hand, I do think Sbux should be capable of keeping up with email that they say will be sent.
Denise R re the 10 star promo and the free drink- to me it is confusing because I am not sure if the rewards in my account are normal rewards due me or if one of them is from the promotion. Did you receive in your account a specific reward that said it was from the promotion? Because if you did, I have not yet seen that in my account.
I checked my MSR account last night and I “earned” the grande drink reward on Saturday. At the stores, there hasn’t been any mention at all about the movie tie-in, the challenge, or the reward redemption process, so I am going to try and see how the redemption process is when I go into work today. So far it just looks like a 3 digit coupon code for the barista to punch in, and I’ll post more details when I’m on my break.
@purple: I received the 10star reward i my regular rewards…..so, I urge you to click onto your latest “drink” reward on the calendar page. Mine shows up only as a regular “cup” reward but when I clicked onto it, it says something to the effect of “calendar challenge reward”, barista code 571 and exp date. (late March, I think) Ironically, I also earned a ‘regular’ reward on the same day that Sbux chose to put the 10 star deal. However, I would never have known that had I not clicked onto the drink….as I do all of them, to check the exp date. (which then shows up as 2 different rewards, under the one “cup” on the one day. ) As I said, no way of knowing unless you click onto the reward cup in your MSR calendar. a little weird, but, I keep my eyes open most of the time! Hope this helps!
Just got the email as well. As the email states, just show the barista the email/tell them to ring discount code 571, and the register will prompt them to scan/swipe your card.
Denise R thanks for the further info. I finally did get the email re the 10 star free drink and how to redeem it and also looked at my rewards chart. I do look but not as often as I should. Thanks. Hope cross country skiing was fun!
@purple and @Devin: so odd, shortly after I posted the above about how I ‘found’ the 10star reward, in my rewards, I received the email. But, this email was dated 2/5 (recvd it late 2/4) and I’d already seen the reward, as I described above, on my MSR calendar on 2/2.
ps: the email that I recvd doesn’t say it’s necessary to show the email to the barista, just order your drink, tell them code 571 and give them your card to swipe.
@denise You’re right, the email doesn’t state that it is necessary to show anything to the barista, but since the partners were not informed about the promotion I figured that just letting them read it would simplify matters and hopefully prevent any negative experiences.
@Devin: I agree, showing the partners the email would likely make it simpler, but only if one has a smart phone. If not, I don’t think it’s worth the ink to print it up. I’ve tried alerting the partners and sms that I know about it. (before I had the email)
Denise I agree perhaps it is a waste of ink to print out that email but given the knowledge or lack of knowledge of different partners at my local SB, I decided to print it out. I really still believe they have to improve the level of communication from corporate to district to local levels.