First of all, I am not trying to promote Starbucks here. Personally I prefer the smaller, independent coffee houses for my daily caffeine fix. I find the coffee is usually better and I like the funky atmosphere that so many of the little neighbourhood places offer. If I am pressed for time I will occasionally hit Starbucks for the convenience factor.
My brother emailed me about a guy from Rhode Island named Jonathan Stark who has started a cool social media experiment. He has posted a picture of his Starbucks card online and is allowing anybody to go use it to buy a coffee, or better yet buy someone else a coffee. It is based on an old Italian custom called Caffe Pagato, which translates to English as "Coffee Paid". Think of it as "take a penny, leave a penny" meets the internet. His twitter feed provides a constant update of how much credit is on the card so it's best to check it before ordering your coffee to avoid embarrassment.
He encourages anyone and everyone to try it out for free. I thought it was intriguing so I went to a local Starbucks to try it out. The store I went to did not have the barcode scanner yet (the system is new to Canada) but the cashier was able to enter in the card number in the picture manually so I could purchase a coffee.
Hmmmm...taking it one step further I had the cashier load $5 on to it and bought a coffee for the guy hanging out by the liqour store in the same strip mall. He looked like he could use a coffee and he certainly was appreciative. It's such a cool experiment! I love the whole pay-it-forward aspect of it so we may try and do something like it in the future on ethicallyhip.com . If you have any ideas or suggestions let us know.
If you want your free coffee go to Jonathans website for all the details.
Coffee cup image from www.skywallpaper.com
