The Magazine

Starbucks offers loyalty special on Foursquare

11

By on October 31st, 2012

UPDATE (11:30 am): The offers described in this post were taken down this morning. Please see below for more information.

Starbucks stores nationwide — 11,000 some-odd of them — are currently offering a loyalty special on Foursquare, making Starbucks the largest company to ever do so.

The offer is good for a free tall coffee after five check-ins at the same location. A secondary offer unlocked on every check-in gives Foursquare users 50¢ off a Grande Drip Coffee when they buy a Fruit Cup, Yogurt & Fruit Parfait, or a Veggie Tray.

Starbucks was the first nationwide retailer to offer a Mayor special on Foursquare, giving users $1 off a Frappuccino if they were the Mayor of the store way back in May of 2010. Since then they’ve partnered for a few badges and a promotion with (RED). They also offer Foursquare check-in capabilities on their in-store WiFi networks.

Visit the Starbucks Foursquare page to find your nearest store.

What do you think of the deals?

UPDATE (1:15 pm): This story gets a little more interesting. Brad Nelson, Starbucks’ product manager for digital, became aware of the offers shortly after our post went live this morning and tweeted:

Apparently these deals were not authorized by Starbucks, which leads one to wonder how they appeared on the venue pages for all 11,000 stores in the US and Australia in the first place (thanks to David Rosen for pointing out Nelson’s tweets in the comments).

UPDATE (8:30 pm): We’ve received a statement from Foursquare regarding the inadvertent specials:

Due to a Foursquare bug, an inaccurate special was accidentally pushed live earlier today at Starbucks. Upon being alerted, we quickly took it down. We have taken steps to prevent this from happening again, and apologize for any confusion.

  • http://www.twitter.com/evanonthegc Evan
    • http://aboutfoursquare.com Chris Thompson

      I believe it’s just US and Australia.

  • https://www.foursquare.com/user/79590 Jonathan Beer

    They appear to have taken down the offer

    • http://shannonsezso.com Shannon

      If the offer was retroactive, Starbucks gave away a lot of coffee in a short amount of time.

  • http://blog.davidhrosen.com David Rosen (@dhrosen)

    According to what I’ve seen on twitter, from the Starbucks product manager of digital, this might not be legit…

    https://twitter.com/bradnelson/statuses/263645001601409024

  • Vic

    It was definitely world wide, my sister and I both unlocked it this morning (in Canada)… I thought it was a little weird that there was a deal at Starbucks given they recently cut back on their own Gold Card perks. It’ll be interesting to see if this changes anything.

  • http://www.beejer.com Beej

    Either…

    A: Future special for the coming holidays that got activated too quickly.
    B: A previous deal that never went forward and accidentally got turned on.
    C: Someone hacked the system and got this inserted.
    D: MAYANS!!!!!!

    • http://aboutfoursquare.com Chris Thompson

      I think those are the most likely answers. D moreso than the others :)

      I originally leaned toward A, but the response leads me to believe that’s not the case.

    • Shannon Mouton

      I vote for Mayans.

  • Queena

    I work as a barista at Starbucks and was surprised to see this on foursquare when there was nothing mentioned to the employees prior. My guess is that when we launch our holiday stuff (which is next Monday), this might roll in with it (we have our store meeting on Sunday).

    I’m going to say it’s an early launch that was accidentally released too early.. (Though I like the Mayan theory too.) :)

    • Queena

      Also. There’s no way we can enter a discount without a discount code, which I didn’t see in the 4sq special, so that did strike me also as a bit odd.

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