Starbucks Botched the Rollout of Its Rewards Program and Made Everyone Mad

Starbucks launched an improved loyalty program, but the ghost of its former Gold Card is coming back to haunt the company.

EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN

NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES – 2020/02/17: American coffee company and coffeehouse chain Starbucks logo seen in Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Yesterday, Starbucks officially launched its reimagined Rewards program—the most significant overhaul to its loyalty structure in years. The new program introduces three membership tiers: Green, Gold, and Reserve. The higher your tier, the faster you earn Stars, the more perks you get, and the less you have to worry about your Stars disappearing. It’s actually a reasonably smart structure, and in a lot of ways, it fixes real problems the old program had.

And yet, a lot of people are very mad. My feeds on X and Threads are full of people mad about losing their Gold status. I think it’s fair to say that if you introduce something that is tangibly better for your customers, and they all get mad at you, you probably did it wrong.

The reason people are mad is that Starbucks spent seven years letting millions of customers believe they still had Gold status—even after the company eliminated it in 2019. That’s a problem that finally came back to bite Starbucks with this rollout.

The original Starbucks Rewards program had tiers. Green was the entry level; Gold was what loyal customers earned. The Gold Card—a physical, personalized card with your name on it—became something of a status symbol. It felt special.

How Canva Became the Power Player in the AI Design Wars

When Starbucks eliminated tiered status in 2019 and moved everyone to a flat program, they didn’t exactly make a big announcement about it. More importantly, they let people keep using their Gold Cards. Those cards still worked, both in the Starbucks app and in your digital wallet on your iPhone. Sure, at some point, Starbucks explained the change, but no one pays attention to that. And, besides, the tangible proof of your status—the Gold Card—was still there.

Then, yesterday, Starbucks announced a shiny new program with—wait for it—Gold status. Suddenly, people who had been walking around for seven years thinking of themselves as Gold members discovered they weren’t. Their status had been determined by their 2025 spending behavior, not by a card they’d been carrying since 2016. A lot of them landed at Green.

To be clear, the benefits you get at Green are essentially the same or better than what everyone had before. Green members earn 1 Star per dollar, can prevent Stars from expiring through simple monthly activity, and get a free drink modification once a month on what Starbucks is calling Free Mod Mondays (once a month, despite the name). Gold members, who need to earn 500 Stars in a year—roughly $500 in spending—get a 1.2x earning rate and Stars that never expire.

© Inc.com