Free brewed coffee from Starbucks–whenever you want it

Although I took the side of tea over coffee recently, I really do love coffee and drink it nearly every day. Here is a trick that I’ve learned for getting free coffee from Starbucks–legitimately, of course.

First, a lot of people don’t know that Starbucks has a special refill price for brewed coffee: $0.50 for any size.

Second, if you have a registered Starbucks card, coffee refills are free in the store (it’s pretty easy to register the card online).

Third–and this is the really important part–Starbucks baristas will almost always give you the refill price (and hence free coffee if you have a registered Starbucks card) if you bring in a Starbucks cup, and even if you haven’t been in the store (this doesn’t mean that you have to pretend to have been in the store; they don’t ask, and they don’t care, and they will give it to you even if they see you walk right in and know you haven’t been there. Once in awhile someone will state the official policy and say that they really oughtn’t give it to me but give it to me anyway.)

For this reason, I always carry a Starbucks Grande cup in my car (the Venti cup is too big and unwieldy to handle while driving; the Grande is just right). Whenever I feel like free coffee, which is often, since it’s free, I just take my cup and go into Starbucks. When the cup starts to get old and cruddy, usually the barista will say, “Let me get you a new cup.” So it’s not as if I have to pay for a new Grande after awhile at full price.

As they say in El Salvador, Sláinte!

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