"So, surrender to sleep at last."

March 19, 2024 8:30 AM

Starbucks announced it will be ending its Starbucks Odyssey (previously) virtual loyalty program. The related NFT market remains open.

(More from TechCrunch, The Verge, Nation's Restaurant News)

posted by box (22 comments total)

I read all of the links and I still don't understand any of this.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:49 AM on March 19 [11 favorites]

Oh no, oh well, who could have predicted, etc.

I clicked around there a bit and didn't find anywhere in the market that didn't read "Highest Active Offer: $0.00"

What a waste.
posted by mhoye at 8:50 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]

I read all of the links and I still don't understand any of this.

NFTs are just tulip mania but 2023 and well-foreseen as a speculative bubble involving the Cybertruck-Apple-Vision-class
posted by paimapi at 8:53 AM on March 19 [3 favorites]

anyway, Starbucks are also suing to eliminate the NLRB in order to dramatically weaken unions in the US, fucking up unionization efforts in so so so so many ways, somehow equating union drives to supporting Hamas in the process so

tee hee hee fuck em, glad they're starting to fail as a biz
posted by paimapi at 9:10 AM on March 19 [8 favorites]

I guess failure is relative, and it's true that their stock price is about 30 percent off its peak, but on the other hand their 2023 revenue was up 11 percent, to about $37 billion, and they serve 100 million customers a week.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:25 AM on March 19

My hot take is that caffeine should only be dispensed by prescription.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:27 AM on March 19

^eponymous
posted by torokunai at 9:52 AM on March 19 [4 favorites]

I'm okay with caffeine going Rx only if meth becomes OTC.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:55 AM on March 19 [7 favorites]

Starbucks are making a big push across Europe right, betting that Europeans also want to drink terrible coffee with weird names. But the joke is on Starbucks, as Europe already has terrible coffee with weird names.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:17 AM on March 19 [15 favorites]

I just got reminded from one of my children that about 20 years ago I thought that Starbucks would go bankrupt. Do you know how many cups of overpriced, terrible, and weirdly named coffee they have to sell to support the real estate on every corner of NYC? Can't be done is what I said. I may have been early, but I stand behind that assessment.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:23 AM on March 19 [2 favorites]

...betting that Europeans also want to drink terrible coffee unicorn-hued iced drinks with weird names
posted by oulipian at 10:40 AM on March 19

Is this like when everybody suddenly had to have a virtual presence in Second Life? And then six months later everyone just forgot all about it. Because I at least sort of understood that.

This is more like someone's trying to hypnotize me by just using a soft droning voice to say "blockchain... blockchain... blockchain" until the word loses all meaning and I sink into a highly suggestible state.
posted by Naberius at 10:47 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]

Well at least everyone can focus on AI now.
posted by Artw at 10:54 AM on March 19 [12 favorites]

My hot take is that caffeine should only be dispensed by prescription.

As long as the only diagnosis required for prescription is "I am alive and required to participate in the world" sure

Also I have read all the links and fail to understand what, if anything, this has to do with the coffee chain itself? I'm someone who drinks Starbucks multiple times per week and at no time has anyone at any store ever even mentioned this thing to me. I bet if I ask my barista this afternoon about it she'll be like "the what-yssey? were we even doing that?"

I would be astonished beyond belief if the sunsetting of this faffing wankery for the terminally online has any impact whatsoever on Starbucks as a coffee company.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:46 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Well at least everyone can focus on AI now.

I'm drinking a Starbucks® chAI Latte as I write this. So far the hallucinations have been robust, with notes of cinnamon.
posted by good in a vacuum at 11:47 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]

what, if anything, this has to do with the coffee chain itself?

Starbucks wanted to connect Odyssey (and, by extension, Web 3.0, NFTs, etc., etc.) to its existing Rewards ecosystem, which had (per the company) 28.7 million active users in 2022.

Rewards (and the app, and the gift cards, and the points, etc.) is a big deal to Starbucks--had this move paid off, it would've put them near the front of the pack of megacorporations looking for new ways to monetize their most dedicated customers.

They hired Steve Kaczynski to help with this. I gather he's a big name in the world of NFTs.

Thanks to his expertise, Starbucks Odyssey was able to offer, in my opinion, a very disappointing volume of low-to-middling quality content (think, like, web games, coffee trivia, that kind of thing). Odyssey had, at maximum (based on how many NFTs were minted), 50,000 or so users.

Steve Kaczynski (per his tweet) recently lost his job. Now that I write all that out, I'm not sure how much any of it has to do with coffee.

Maybe I just have a weakness for stories where a big corporation tries to make people like something unappealing, and then fails miserably.

On a related note, have you tried an Oleato?
posted by box at 12:25 PM on March 19 [4 favorites]

Maybe I just have a weakness for stories where a big corporation tries to make people like something unappealing, and then fails miserably.

Oh, absolutely. My response was more for the folks who seem convinced that this will sink the company somehow. It may be the case that airlines are basically banks with a side gig in flying airplanes, and McDonalds is a real estate company with a side gig of burgers, but Starbucks is still primarily a company that sells beverages and beverage accessories, and I see no indication that this is an impediment to it.

If they were to suddenly announce that they were closing down their rewards program altogether, or sunsetting their ordering app, or otherwise really fundamentally changing how most people interacted with the company, I'd agree. But I would bet that 9 out of 10 regular starbucks customers (and probably a non-trivial number of employees!) had no idea this thing ever existed.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:11 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

It may be the case that airlines are basically banks with a side gig in flying airplanes, and McDonalds is a real estate company with a side gig of burgers, but Starbucks is still primarily a company that sells beverages and beverage accessories, and I see no indication that this is an impediment to it.

Gift cards are the bit where they are like a bank - serious amount of sort-of money wrapped up in those.
posted by Artw at 2:20 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

They hired Steve Kaczynski to help with this. I gather he's a big name in the world of NFTs.

God, that must be horrible. Like being the world's #3 ranked Candy Land player.
posted by Naberius at 2:25 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]

Wait, were they selling actual cups of "slurp juice," then?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:10 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

A Starbucks barista was murdered, the suspect is still at venti.
posted by DreamerFi at 4:37 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]

I don't think this is causing Starbucks to fail? I do think the NFT marketplace not leading to a bigger bank of prepurchased cards plus all the major fucking over their global empire ambitions and you have multiple stock price sinkers give how poorly they're able to capitalize in their remaining avenues of growth

combined with the larger sentiment that the younger generational cohorts have towards it and corporations in general, it's more obvious now that it's not an empire meant to last. this is great. these things are not going to outright tank it, sure. but when I say 'starting to fail' that means 'starting' in most commonly understood definitions of the word (ie not soon)
posted by paimapi at 11:16 AM on March 20