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Starbucks, monetary superpower

jpkoning.blogspot.com

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Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#121

Post by kvgr »

xeromal wrote: post #78
bitwize wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks coffee and espresso drinks are "will do in a pinch" for me. I'd much rather frequent a local coffee shop with better espresso than what Starbucks serves. I think Starbucks makes more money these days from its sugary cold drinks than its hot coffee/tea/espresso.

I think that for all of their drinks but the coldbrew. They have solid cold brew and I've tried nearly every artisan coffee shop in DTLA and the valley

Yup, even Costa Coffee has decent cold brew. In my opinion it is very hard to make a bad cold brew, compared to espresso. You just take OK coffee and let it sit for 12 hours. Bingo. With espresso - in Starbucks the make the "american espresso" that quite sucks. It is large and burned.

Also Starbucks french press is pretty decent and good value for money, but it is on "secret" menu and you need to ask for it.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#123

Post by hombre_fatal »

cryptoz wrote: post #7
jahbrewski wrote: post #2

Not so sure it's due to "coffee addicts" so much as the fact that Starbucks gift cards became the perfect, generic, gift. How many times have you been on your way to X, needed to bring a gift, and just run into Walgreens?

Anecdotally, I've spent maybe ~$5,000 at starbucks in my life. I used a gift card for ~$25 of that and I have never given one as a gift. For me, it is the predictable atmosphere, the AC, the WiFi, the coffee itself, the hours of operation, and the location convenience that draws my money, not the gift cards. I would be surprised to learn I'm in the minority there, as I figured I was a common starbucks demographic / c…

And the coffee tastes fine. I'm not at Starbucks to have my mind blown on coffee every day. I'm such a daily coffee drinker that I'm far beyond masturbating to it. It's more like beer to me: I'm not drinking Corona at the beach because Corona is the pinnacle of beverages.

People who like to be seen pooping on Starbucks to me are like people who need to have it known that there are indeed better beers in the world when saddled with a Corona at a social event: Yes, we know, but that's not why we're here.

Also, Starbucks is the only cafe I can find that ever has couches. No coffee is worth sitting in those tiny rigid chairs that most cafes have. Also, I don't feel guilty working out of a Starbucks for multiple hours compared to tiny cafes.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#124

Post by lxgr »

dannyw wrote: post #70
pweezy wrote: post #50

I've always thought that the main reason for Starbucks to push their card and reward program is to save on per-transaction credit card fees. By my understanding, in the US, typical merchant fees to accept a card are a flat $0.20-$0.30 transaction fee, plus 2-3% of the total dollar amount. The article mentions the interchange fee (the 2-3%), but for small purchases the transaction fee is more significant. I assume the…

Big players like Starbucks pay per transaction fees in the range of zero.

There's no getting out of paying 1-2% of interchange fees unless you're willing to exclusively accept debit cards.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#125

Post by jjeaff »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #116
mbesto wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was eye opening to consider how legally complex many such 'simple' things, like gift cards, are when implemented on a wide scale. To the armchair HN community who ask "why does it take 1k engineers to run ". Here is your answer. Note - to be fair, yes many of these team are indeed bloated and work on projects that are a result of NIH syndrome, where "buy vs build" decisions just automatically default to "build".…

> To the armchair HN community who ask "why does it take 1k engineers to run ". Here is your answer. I think the usual question isn't why a random SV app yas 1k engineers, but why does it have The answer is the same, but let's be clear: this is not an engineering job. It's legal and sales job.

I don't think many really say that about monsters like Amazon. It's usually these very limited in scope and functionality like Twitter that boggle the mind.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#126

Post by kgwgk »

csomar wrote: post #118
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link was from 2016. They do now! https://goo.gl/maps/oVQLjLTgbYzCdDPNA

Google street shows that they were operating from 2014.

There are Starbucks in Spain since 2001 [1]. But currently they are not owned, not even in part, by the US company.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2001/10/08/daily...

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#127

Post by lxgr »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #49
cbhl wrote: post #15

The magic trick here is that Starbucks Rewards -- their "free" loyalty program -- requires using a Starbucks Card (virtual or physical) in order to make your purchases. Under the old system (prior to ~Apr 2019) you had to make $150 in purchases annually to get "Gold" status, and then you got a free reward after every ~$62.50 in Starbucks spending. The new program has no minimum, and tiered rewards between $12.50 and…

You can get a virtual card in the app and "pay" with it by loading on the exact amount you need to pay with before checking out (or just buying it in the app). So it "needs" a card, but that's really just a weird thing they didn't abstract from the app, it's not actually an inconvenience (at least to me)

As far as I remember, there is no way to load an exact amount, so you always end up with some spare change in the app.

I assume that this is somewhat of an incentive to quite a few customers: That almost-forgotten balance almost feels like a discount towards the next purchase, not so much as a free loan to Starbucks.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#128

Post by Japhy_Ryder »

notatoad wrote: post #4
jahbrewski wrote: post #2

Not so sure it's due to "coffee addicts" so much as the fact that Starbucks gift cards became the perfect, generic, gift. How many times have you been on your way to X, needed to bring a gift, and just run into Walgreens?

the default setting on the starbucks app on my phone is to automatically top up every time the balance drops below $10. So starbucks basically has a permanent $10 loan from me. I'm sure i'm not the only one. actual gift cards given as gifts though are probably more likely to be used up and discarded, instead of being set to auto-reload and carry a balance.

Yikes. A permanent $10 loan towards bad coffee? I feel for you.

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#129

Post by ghaff »

jasim wrote: post #113
jimmaswell wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So bloated sets of laws necessitate bloated teams.

More generally, reality just gets more nuanced as things go broader or deeper in scope. Toy projects are clean, uncluttered; production code needs error handling, logging, monitoring, scaling, and much more.

And, even more generally, it needs to be promoted and sold, money collected, customers supported, taxes paid, partners engaged with, events attended, people hired, people managed, their expenses reimbursed...

Re: Starbucks, monetary superpower

#130

Post by ghaff »

peterwwillis wrote: post #90
bdamm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful tip, thanks! Related is sending Amazon gift cards from the Amazon of their country to people who live in a different country, so that you can effectively send cash without actually sending cash or requiring the receiver to sign up for Paypal etc. The only gotcha is you have to do it using the flavor of Amazon that is the receiver's Amazon, but since Amazon ports your user account and payment information betwee…

Which is also why Amazon is one of the most popular money laundering sites. Buy goods with stolen cards, ship them somewhere, resell for profit (both gift cards and real merch)

Even at a small-scale legitimate level, Amazon's useful as a sort of pseudo-cash/petty change bank. They're often a good way to cash out reward points of various types or as a "bank" to convert things like Visa gift cards so you don't need to keep track of them.

I have noticed though that Amazon seems to have recognized that people like them for this sort of thing and their point conversion rates often carry a bit of a premium and certainly aren't as good as you can get from some more niche retailers.

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