Starbucks is brewing up an expanded loyalty card in two test markets: Vancouver and Denver.
Dubbed the “Gold Card,” the pilot program offers a select number of Starbucks card users benefits that include a free beverage on their birthday, friends and family discount days, a members-only newsletter and a free drink for every 10 purchased.
It’s essentially an upgrade of the Starbucks card rewards program that launched in April which has given away 900,000 brewed coffee refills and other rewards.
Alisa Martinez, communications manager for Starbucks in Seattle, said the Gold Card pilot is a response to customer feedback through a forum created at Starbucks.com.
Vancouver and Denver were chosen because both cities share a “committed customer base” that regularly use their Starbucks cards, she said. Starbucks has 967 stores in Canada and 175 of those are in the Greater Vancouver area.
Martinez said the company has signed up around two million rewards members, and reloads (adding money to an existing card) are up 50% from this time last year.
“We are really trying to… listen to our customers and find out from them what they are looking for,” she said. “And value is one of the things that they have been telling us that they are interested in receiving.”
However, the previously recession-proof Starbucks recently posted a $6.7 million quarterly loss—the first time since it went public in 1992—and announced the closure of 600 U.S. stores.
Aside from a national television campaign that launched at the end of last year in the U.S., Martinez said the coffee company has no plans to increase advertising and will continue to rely on in-store point of sale and public relations.
