On November 13th, Starbucks around the nation hosted the annual Red Cup Day event. Designed to help boost the Winter menus release, customers receive a 2025 limited edition reusable red cup with a purchase of a hand-crafted holiday drink. Although it may seem over-hyped for a plastic red cup, it brings along with it a few benefits.
According to the Starbucks website, “Customers who bring in their clean reusable red cup (or any cup!) will receive a 10-cent discount on their beverage, plus Starbucks Rewards members will earn double stars on their entire order.” Similar to how a points system works on any franchise apps, stars equal free items. At Starbucks, customers earn 1 star for every 1 dollar spent. However, with the double points system, customers will get more free items because they are earning 2 stars per dollar, items such as flavor add-ins, drinks, pastries, and even merchandise.
Another notable feature of these cups is that they aren’t basic red Solo cups; they are environmentally friendly due to their 95% recycled material content, and also because of their festive designs, featuring hand-drawn illustrations by Starbucks designer Yvonne Chan.
“The design is inspired by the little moment of magic you feel when you step into a Starbucks from the cold outside,” said Chan in an interview with Starbucks. “With the hand-drawn sketch, I tried to capture the feeling of something crafted by one person for another.”
Sophomore Starbucks lover Savanna McIntyre is especially drawn to Red Cup Day for this reason.
“I love a good reusable cup, and they are adorable,” McIntyre said. “I was so excited for Red Cup Day, I accidentally went a week early, expecting a Red Cup.”
Red Cup Day is clearly an exciting event to kick off the holiday season, but was it really all excitement for busy baristas?
Ella Gonnering is a junior at ADM High School and a barista at the Hickman and Alice’s Road Starbucks location. “ I started working at Starbucks a month or two ago, and so far I like it a lot,” said Gonnering. “I get a lot of benefits like a ton of free drinks, free food, and discounts; it’s quite nice.”
Red Cup Day was an extra hassle for Gonnerings’ location: “My store actually didn’t get the shipment of cups until way later than everyone else, so my store manager was going into other stores and borrowing their cup.” With such a high demand for people waiting for their free merchandise, they still had to supply paying customers.
Gonnering said, “So when we got our shipment late, we still had a ton left. So when other locations ran out, they would come to our store hunting down the red cups.”
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Hickman location; it brought more business to them, although they were late to the game.
“Although we got a ton of customers and we were kinda swamped, it kept us busy, and the store and baristas made more profit because of the extra business, with us giving almost 1200 red cups,” Gonnering said.
Red Cup Day, although chaotic and frenzied, is a great way for a business to promote its new menus as the seasons change. For baristas, it has its benefits and challenges, but…sip happens.
