Did you get hit with a Treat Receipt Stampede?

During the last promotion, the Starbucks stores I frequented were always swamped at 2 p.m. For those visitors here who are unfamiliar with the deal: From July 18 through September 5, customers who make a cold beverage purchase in the morning can bring in their receipt after 2 p.m. and get any Grande cold beverage for $2 (plus tax). I'm a brewed/drip (whatever you call it) fan so I can't take advantage of this discount. || Read "Starbucks Invites Customers to Take a Summer Afternoon Break"

Comments

[Jennifer]

you can purchase ANYTHING in ANY of the stores before 2pm and then come back after 2pm hits (to any store) and get any iced grande beverage you would like excluding the smoothies. May I also add that our iced coffee is brewed through our drip system and then iced so technically if you drink iced coffee, that makes you a drip coffee drinker. I hope that you will now take advantage of the treat receipt and give our iced coffee a shot, it's pretty tasty if I do say so myself!

[Crateish]

Been waiting for this. I pick up an iced coffee in the morning and a Iced Soy Chai Tea in the afternoon for basically, half price.

If anyone at Starbucks is reading this, promotions like this literally double my visits to your stores during their run. And I often get my lunch to take with me during my morning visit.

[spence]

I love treat receipt season. ... so many happy customers.

[Coffee Solider]

Smoothies are not excluded.

[Licensed Store Corporate Policy Nazi]

Jennifer I believe its actually purchase anything before noon, and then come back after two. I don't believe you can buy something at 1:59 and then come back and a grande beverage at 2:01 with the same receipt. I don't have the stamp in front of me right now, but I think the legalese says buy something in the 'morning' meaning before noon.

[Barista Ben]

It says in the morning, but as far as what partners have been told, if someone buys something before 2pm and gets a receipt they can use it after 2pm and get the $2 cold drink offer.

So if someone buys something from me at 1:59pm and then asks to use it a minute later to get a cold drink, I'll just say "yes!" and do it.

Why wouldn't I? The overall point of the treat receipt is to get more people going to stores in the 2pm+ range, and it works. You might get a few people who abuse it or who demand to buy 1 drink at 1:59 and another at 2pm but as a whole the promo works pretty well.

[waltie]

At my store the printer stops automatically printing every receipt at 2:00pm, so I'm fairly certain that's the cut-off point.

But the bottom line is that this is a time when you would "just say yes," especially when you are just saying yes to letting a customer spend more money.

And I haven't been told or read anything about smoothies being excluded, so just say yes to that as well. The signs all say, "An iced grande beverage of your choice."

[Jmo]

I think smoothies were excluded in the past if I remember correctly, but this year I saw nothing about an exclusion.

[waltie]

I would love it if smoothies were excluded from the menu all together, or at least if the recipe was modified to account for frozen bananas, since they are now pretty much inedible no matter how much you blend them.

But if somebody wants one for $2.00, I'll be happy to do it, since it's better than having to throw away a full tub of frozen bananas every five hours.

[TheRootinator]

My store doesn't even bother thawing the bananas/bringing them from storage altogether. All the partners hate Vivanos, so the till partner will upsell a STCF instead.

To be on topic, my store hasn't been hit by anything drastic yet. We'll see, though.

[frapatte]

Frozen bananas always sound completely dreadful, what is Sbux thinking with those? Luckily my store gets fresh bananas everyday so we have delicious smoothies AND a much higher avg ticket thanks to all the people who buy bananas in the morning.

[otterinthewater]

If it makes the frozen banana folks feel any better, the fresh ones are just as annoying. I'm not quite sure what kind of chemical preservative or ripener or both or whatever they're doused with, but they go from green and nearly impossible to peel to a pile of mush in about two days.

[John Deese]

The barista I had this morning who almost always seems like she's in a bad mood completely dismissed me without giving me a treat receipt. I was thinking it was cause I only bought a drip coffee (It's not entirely that I'm a cheapskate, only partially so). I saw her outline the whole treat receipt deal to this guy who had bought a mug ahead of me... so what's the deal with my cranky barista?

[spence]

@John. Baristas should never be cranky and you should have received a treat receipt. (Sometimes when we are busy; we just forget.)

[Stan]

what preservvatives would make a banana go from unripe, to ripe in 2 days. don't you think a banana without preservatives would do that?

[ash_sk8s]

Smoothies have never been excluded. I have ALWAYS used treat receipts as the one time I can afford to get a chocolate smoothie with an add shot. The past two years, I have gotten these during treat receipt season.

[Ryan Mymko]

What if I order five coffees in the morning and get one receipt? Am I entitled to five iced coffees for $2 after 2pm? If not, can ask the cashier to print me five seperate receipts in the morning?

[Jmo]

I think all 5 drinks would have to be rung separately.

[waltie]

I think the next open topic should be about how awful frozen bananas are, since I think it's a topic worthy of discussion, and maybe if enough people talk about it Starbucks will go back to shipping every store fresh bananas, which will be a win-win for the company, since we are losing money in the loss of sales of fresh bananas and the decline in quality of our smoothies.

As for ringing up multiple drinks in order to get extra receipts, I'd just say yes. Hell, even if you just ask me to print out two receipts, I'd just say yes to that as well. The point is to get people coming in to buy drinks at the slow periods of the day, so the more receipts you have, theoretically the more money you'll spend. Another win win.

[Robert]

In my market (Florida) we should easily be able to have fresh bananas. However, we have had frozen since smoothies launched. We actually used to have frozen sliced bananas and an extra ice scoop to use. I honestly think that the smoothies need to be either revamped or removed from the stores. We have broken two blender drive sockets on frozen bananas (obviously they're not supposed to be blended frozen).

[otterinthewater]

@Stan

Not just ripe, but a weird state of overripe that's pretty gross.

[just saying]

@waltie - why not go buy bananas? when you run out you get some so go buybthem for 39c/pound and sell them for a buck a piece and have better tasting Smoothies?
done. :)

[StarbucksShift]

Purchasing anything at the grocery store with the pcard is going to affect your dairy variance, otherwise I would purchase bananas.

[WPGBRSTA]

@StarbucksShift,

The PCard used to have a 'dairy emrg' use only stigma to it. However, both the discritpion on the PCard/Paid put tab in your CML and most SMs and DMs approve its use for just about everything. Too many mis-handled cash paid outs have caused the chains to loosen up on the PCard. Wheather for bananas, bandaids, tiolet paper or like in my case a $2 awesome flat plastic drain stopper thingy to fill the sinks because someone tossed our metal one out!
All in all, it is only when the DMs go over the paid outs that the milk paid outs get put towards the dairy variance. Then we get the calculations as to how many more we are purchasing VS how many we get and bump orders.
Stupid 'naners.

[nrrfed]

Alas, our store is the only store that ISN'T doing treat receipts..

Quite interesting.

[waltie]

"Alas, our store is the only store that ISN'T doing treat receipts.. "

Why not?

[foxtrot]

My store is in Massachusetts and we have only used fresh bananas always. I don't understand frozen ones. Remember the commercial "Never put bananas in the refrigerator"!!

[northernshift]

Treat-receipt traffic is down this year at my store. But absence of knowledge on how it works and is redeemed is UP! On both staff and customer fronts. Examples:

Why can't this beverage be discounted? Because it isn't iced, that's why.

Can I have the treat receipt? No, cause it's 9pm and it won't work for you tomorrow.

And yet, we have customers who will accept a smoothie minus the out-of-stock banana!

[How many calories in a cup of coffee]

Mocha has the most calories.. so think twice when you are ordering Mocha from Starbucks.