Free Coffee Screwup
Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf got into the same trouble Starbucks had a few years back. They gave away online printable coupons for free Tea Lattes. The problem was, the coupons didn’t have any unique identification code or anything like that so people ended up forwarding the coupon to everybody and mass printing them. Big mistake.
I got a forward of this coupon yesterday, it being free, I printed a whole lot and gave it to my employees. We then went to Coffee Bean Ortigas Park only to find out that so many people claimed free Lattes that they’ve actually ran out of cups.
I noticed that the store managers didn’t seem to happy to serve us either when they found out we have coupons; I’m pretty sure they’re losing money over this (whether due to manpower or actual cash).
The original concept was, you would go to this site www.whatsyourcoffeebeanandtealeafstory.com, type in a Coffee Bean experience story then you’d get a coupon as a reward. Voting for someone else’s story would also get you a coupon. But because there was no code on the coupon or any way to verify that you actually went to the site and voted or submitted a story, Coffee Bean was forced to issue drinks to anybody who had a printed out coupon.
The Robinson’s Galleria Coffee Bean, was by far the worst Coffee Bean experience I’ve ever had. The store manager, whom I think was just trying to make sure that people with coupons actually went to the site, was actually grilling everybody with coupons. The intention was good for the business, but he was very impolite in doing that that I actually decided never to go back to that branch ever again. I frequent the Coffee Bean eastwood branch and never before had I experienced being served by an asshole at a Coffee Bean.
The whole marketing promo was just badly planned I think. Instead of attracting more people to their stores, they’ve just turned them off.
