Maybe it's just me, but nothing says a merchant cares more than free stuff, even if that free stuff is coming my way because the store's POS system has gone down. If others feel the same as I do, then Starbucks earned a lot of love last Friday evening as stores gave free drinks to customers after an internal glitch caused the chain's POS terminals to go down in the U.S. and Canada.
After calling Starbucks "the best in technology" on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" earlier this week, Jim Cramer said the chain's "customers were thrilled with the free coffee" handed out by baristas. The outage "didn't mean anything" to investors, said Mr. Cramer, after Starbucks announced same-store sales increased seven percent during the latest quarter, well ahead of analysts' expectations.
According to a Nation's Restaurant News report, Starbucks management was pleased with the response of stores to the technological glitch. A number of people took to the Starbucks Partners Twitter page to tweet their appreciation.
Source: Twitter
- Point of Sale Register Outage Resolved; Starbucks Stores Opening Normally - Starbucks
- Cramer: Starbucks outage means nothing for stock - CNBC
- Starbucks back in business: Internal report blames deleted database table, indicates outage was global - GeekWire
- Restaurant Operations Watch: Starbucks pours ingenuity during POS outage - Nation's Restaurant News