I mean I’d love to have a free $21M a year, but if you’re already Starbucks then somehow it feels like pocket change compared to your actual earnings and would question if it was worth the effort.
But they also have over a billion cash at hand. I imagine at that scale and customers being private, the amount is pretty stable and Starbucks can just do whatever with this since it's extremely unlikely that customers demand all their money back at once.
I mean, once Starbucks have it, then the customers get it back via product (that has a margin included), or just leave it forever (free money!)
I have a firm "No vouchers" rule because of this, the vouchers in my part of the world inexplicably "expire" if not used within a certain amount of time, cannot be redeemed for cash, and will not be honoured if the business goes belly up
That was actually a bad year, as that "free" $21 million represented a loss of about $30 million. $1.17 billion on Jan 1st 2016 is equivalent to $1.22 billion a year later due to inflation. So they would have had to generate $50 million just to break even in actual buying power terms.
foepys|18 days ago
awesome_dude|18 days ago
I mean, once Starbucks have it, then the customers get it back via product (that has a margin included), or just leave it forever (free money!)
I have a firm "No vouchers" rule because of this, the vouchers in my part of the world inexplicably "expire" if not used within a certain amount of time, cannot be redeemed for cash, and will not be honoured if the business goes belly up
TylerE|18 days ago
sunrunner|18 days ago