The Caribou Coffee chain announced on Friday that it will honor a free-drink offer sent out via e-mail by Starbucks last month but then rescinded because of alleged abuse.
The Starbucks promotion, sent on Aug. 23 to employees of company-owned Starbucks in the southeastern U.S. region, offered free iced grande-sized beverages to “our family and friends.” The e-mail included a printable coupon and encouraged those employees to “forward this invitation to everyone in your e-mail address book.”
But Starbucks withdrew the offer on Tuesday Aug. 29, saying in a follow-up e-mail to employees that the offer had been “redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks’ control.” The offer was voided, with point-of-sale notices to that effect appearing at Starbucks registers last weekend.
On Friday, Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee announced that it will honor those Starbucks coupons, but only for one day: today, Sept. 8. And customers will only get to choose among Caribou’s iced coffee or tea drinks. Caribou’s intent, according to press reports, is to promote its “cold-press” iced coffee, made by steeping coffee in cold water for a long time instead of brewing it and then chilling it.
It’s not known how widely the Starbucks coupon was spread over the Internet. But reports said that by Tuesday Aug. 29 at least one eBay seller was offering a pack of 20 of the coupons for 99 cents, plus $1.50 shipping.
Founded in 1992, Caribou has 340 stores in 16 states. The 35-year-old Starbucks has almost 12,000 outlets (about 5500 of them company-owned) in all 50 states and in 36 other countries.
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