The Reason Starbucks Is Making It Harder For You To Earn Rewards

Starbucks is changing the terms of its rewards program, so that if you're one of the people who spend around $5 or less per visit, you won’t get as many freebies.

The Seattle-based coffee chain says its loyalty program will award stars based on the dollars spent starting in April. Currently, people earn a star for each transaction, regardless of how much they spend, and get a free food or item of their choice after earning 12 stars. With the new changes in order to earn a free item you'll have to have 125 stars which translates to spending $62.50 to get your free item. Say you spend $2 a day to get your drip coffee. Under the current rules of the program you would spend $24 to get a reward but after the changes to the loyalty program that same person will have to visit Starbucks 31 times to get their free reward.

According to WQAD, in a call with analysts, Starbucks Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ryan said the vast majority of customers will earn rewards at an equal or better rate with the change. Without providing details, he said a “small minority” of customers will earn rewards at a slower pace. Last month, Starbucks said it had 11.1 million loyalty program members in the U.S., up 23 percent from the previous year.

According to the company, the changes are the number one request loyalty members have, helping to prompt the change.