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A few days ago I wrote a detailed review of the Starbucks® Rewards Visa® Card. I briefly talked about how to redeem Starbucks Rewards Stars, though after publishing the post, a colleague of mine made me aware of the fact that there was so much more I could be doing to maximize my Stars.
For example, did you know you a caffe misto with 12 shots of espresso, six pumps of syrup, and cocoa powder, costs the same number of Starbucks Stars as a plain cup of coffee? Okay, the former admittedly sounds horrifying, but the point is that the possibilities are endless. 😉
I’ve been down a Starbucks Rewards rabbit hole the past few days, and I kind of love it. I love learning the ins-and-outs of loyalty programs — while I usually focus on travel loyalty programs, there are some really cool aspects to the Starbucks Rewards program.
Now, I think context is important — I’m not the world’s biggest Starbucks fan. Rather I sometimes go to Starbucks because the product is consistent and ordering is easy. My usual order is a cold brew to drink, and a spinach feta wrap to eat.
Starbucks Rewards is Starbucks’ rewards program. “Stars” are the rewards currency of the program, and you can earn them through purchases at Starbucks stores, or through Starbucks’ co-branded credit card.
What makes Starbucks Rewards more exciting than some other loyalty programs? Well, the program isn’t strictly revenue based, but rather has a rewards chart where you can get a wildly different dollar value for your Stars depending on how you redeem them.
I love how there are drinks that cost $3 and drinks that cost $15 that both require the same number of Stars for a redemption.
There are several ways you can earn Starbucks Stars:
To maximize your Stars you should always be using a registered Starbucks Card for your Starbucks spending, with a preloaded balance. Furthermore, Starbucks sometimes has double Stars days, where members can earn 4x Starbucks Stars for spending, rather than 2x Stars.
Starbucks Stars expire six months after the month in which they were earned. In other words, if you earn Stars on January 15, 2020, they’d expire on August 1, 2021. Note that if you have the Starbucks Rewards Visa Card then all the Stars that you earn don’t expire, so that gives you quite a bit more flexibility.
Starbucks Rewards has five different redemption rates, ranging from 25 to 400 Stars per item. Here’s how much you can expect to pay:
When it comes time to redeem Starbucks Stars, there are some general things to keep in mind:
My colleague made me aware of the website Starbucks Hacker, and I love it. The website goes into the ins-and-outs of the Starbucks Rewards program as much as I go into the details of frequent flyer programs.
This also taught me what’s probably the single best use of Starbucks Rewards Stars:
If you redeem for a caffe misto, you can add espresso shots, syrups, and more, to the drink, at no extra cost. A venti caffe misto costs $3.65 or 50 Stars.
But that’s kind of boring, no? Let’s make some modifications…
How about we add in four espresso shots, some pumps of syrup, some cocoa powder, and some almond milk foam? This would still only cost 50 Stars, while the cash cost would be over $10.
My colleague ordered one of these yesterday and said it actually tasted good. Personally I feel kind of sick even looking at the order, as much as I love the value of this on paper.
So you could also take it easy on the syrups, but still get significantly more value. If you order enough espresso shots in one drink, then I think your coffee with milk actually becomes a full-on latte.
I’m an old fashioned guy — leave out all the syrups, I think I’ll just take a 12 shot caffe misto, which would retail for over $15 (warning: proceed at your own risk). 😉
To be clear, I’m not at all suggesting that this is what anyone should actually order. Rather I’m just having fun with all of this and playing around with the possibilities.
One other great perks of the program is that Starbucks Rewards members receive a free reward on their birthday ever year:
You can use similar strategies to the above for maximizing your Starbucks birthday reward. However, you can just go straight for the handcrafted beverage, because any eligible drink is covered.
It’s hard to give a concrete answer as to how much Starbucks Stars are worth:
In trying to come up with a valuation, let’s pick items at random from some of these categories (I’m going off of Miami pricing here):
This is just a random selection of items without any sort of add-ons. As you can see, we’re looking at anywhere from 3.0-7.0 cents of value per Starbucks Star. Based on that, personally I’d conservatively value Starbucks Stars at somewhere in the range of 4-5 cents each.
I love loyalty programs of all kinds, and particular ones where there are ways to get outsized value. While Starbucks Rewards is hardly as lucrative as an airline frequent flyer program, I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with it, given all the creative redemption opportunities.
Redemption values vary significantly, so it’s worth at least putting some thought into how you redeem your Starbucks Stars.
To summarize my Starbucks Rewards advice:
Unfortunately my go-to Starbucks orders only get me three cents of value per Star, so I need to do better. I guess I’ll be trying a caffe misto on my next visit to Starbucks. 😉
Anyone have any other tips for maximizing the Starbucks Rewards program? What’s your go-to reward redemption?
