Free Starbucks

How to Get Free Starbucks Every Day (and Also Infuriate Your Barista)

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

MAXINE BUILDER / EXTRACRISPY.COM 

This story originally appeared on Extracrispy.com.

If you order an Iced Quad Venti Vanilla White Mocha at Starbucks every single day, your monthly tab is going to add up quickly—so I wouldn't necessarily blame you if you tried to figure out a way to get free Starbucks every day. If you're really lucky, you might win free Starbucks for life, like one lucky lady in Kansas did earlier this year. But if you want to take matters into your own hand, you can follow in the footsteps of one horrible Starbucks customer who used this so-called hack to get free Starbucks that's actually more of a dick move than anything else. As Brad Halsey, a Starbucks barista, wrote in an email to Jezebel's Kitchenette, one customer at his store, "purchased 365 Starbucks cards and registered every one of them online with a different birthday so that he gets a 'free birthday drink' EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR." That means that every single day, this customer walks into Starbucks and orders a free "birthday" drink.


Halsey, at this point, is wise to this man's trick to get free Starbucks, and yet, the customer continues to maintain that it's a fluke in the Starbucks app. "Even though I know exactly how he 'beat the system' there, he pretends that his app is just malfunctioning and it magically gives him the same free birthday drink every day," Halsey complains, adding, "If he was a nice guy, I might not be so irritated." But it gets worse.

Apparently this customer is a total brat who insists on writing his own order on the cup in black marker. And it's complicated:

He draws lines and arrows and writes all over the cup while telling me: 'Two pumps of white mocha here, then add five pumps of vanilla. That should take us to this line here where you’re gonna add cold heavy cream up to this ridge here...it should be halfway between this line and this line. Make sure to add the heavy whipping cream before the espresso, it changes the taste if you do it out of order. Then add your four shots, three regular and one long shot. That long shot is important, since you guys reformulated your machines, it’s been Hell trying to get my drink right. That long shot helps balance it. Then stir it for me, Mister Brad. Now do me a favor and add ice to the top there and it’ll be easy as pie. I’m not picky so don’t worry about shaking it or anything like that.'

Then, this customer doesn't even pay the proper amount for this extra complicated drink because of the "app malfunction."

So sure, you could absolutely buy 365 different Starbucks cards (366, if you're factoring in a leap year) and register each of them with a different birthday. It's kind of an ingenious hack, when you think about it. But chances are good that your barista will start hating you if you come in every single day claiming it's your birthday. Plus, it's definitely unethical. So be a good customer, and just take your free drink on your actual birthday, OK? And always remember to tip your barista.