Starbucks is latest coffee chain to water down its reward scheme – with customers having to spend 20% MORE to get free drink
Starbucks has become the latest coffee chain to weaken its customer loyalty scheme, requiring shoppers to spend significantly more to earn a free drink. The move follows a wider trend among high street coffee retailers of quietly reducing the value of their reward programmes, prompting frustration among regular customers who feel increasingly short-changed by schemes originally designed to encourage repeat custom and brand loyalty.
Under the revised terms, customers now need to spend around 20% more than previously to qualify for a free drink through the rewards programme. The change places Starbucks alongside other coffee chains that have recently scaled back loyalty perks, as retailers look to manage costs amid ongoing pressure on profit margins, even as such moves risk alienating the very customers the schemes were meant to retain.
- Starbucks toughens loyalty scheme rules for earning free drinks
- Customers must now spend 20% more to qualify
- Part of a wider trend of coffee chains cutting reward perks
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Coffee chains face genuine pressure on profit margins from rising labour costs, supply chain challenges, and elevated high street rents. Loyalty programmes are expensive operations whose rewards represent real business costs; adjusting scheme terms makes them economically sustainable rather than forcing companies to abandon them entirely. Retaining a modified programme that still offers value is preferable to eliminating rewards altogether, and represents a pragmatic adaptation to changed economic circumstances.
The case against
Customers developed shopping habits and loyalty based on programmes with clearly understood original terms; quietly weakening those terms represents a breach of the implicit contract between retailer and consumer. When schemes were explicitly designed to encourage repeat custom, reducing their value whilst customers remain anchored to the brand exploits customer inertia rather than earning genuine loyalty. Such stealth reductions undermine the schemes' original purpose and risk triggering precisely the customer alienation they were meant to prevent.