Starbucks barista warns coffee fans of discount hack they shouldn't try
Sophie Cockerham
Featured Image Credit: @sineadrobbins / TikTok / Andrew Aitchison / Alamy Stock Photo
We all love Starbucks - and now, thanks to the internet, there are plenty of hacks that have been shared by fellow customers which can heavily discount your usual order.
But while most are happy with a cut-price coffee, one cheeky client tried to take advantage of the chain’s good nature when they requested to receive their drink… completely for free.
In a TikTok video that has been liked a staggering 760.7K times, Massachusetts barista Sinead Robbins told her followers about the brazen attempt of one Starbucks regular - who simply purchased a 5-cent bag using the online app, and then wrote their whole drink order in the extra ‘order request’ section.
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“Hi, could I please have a grande strawberry creme frap with no whipped cream and a strawless lid. Thank you!” they wrote.
Unfortunately, their shameless antics didn’t wash with Sinead and her team, who deleted the order.
“This is not a Starbucks hack,” she said in the clip, which has been viewed 4.4 million times. “It was a little bit funny but it won’t work. We cancelled the order.”
But in a nod to the hopeful customer, Sinead added: “So don’t do this, but this person really tried.”
In a second video, the employee answered some “hard-hitting questions” about the debacle from her 17.9k followers.
For those perplexed by the customer being able to order a carrier bag, Sinead explained how - much like in the UK - Massachusetts has a law where shops have to charge for a receptacle to encourage people to bring reusable items.
She also revealed that she works at an on-campus branch of Starbucks which allows customers to type in a request to edit their order.
“I kind of didn’t want to cancel it because I wanted the person to show up, but my manager cancelled it because everybody was talking about it,” Sinead later admitted.
This isn’t the first time that TikTok has had a hand in customers pushing their luck when it comes to their complicated Starbucks orders.
In 2021, employees complained they were like “coffee-making robots” thanks to ‘secret-menu hacks’ being shared on the popular video app.
"These orders are driving us insane because they're so long, so specific and it requires you to do much more work than you should be doing for one single drink and they're not being adequately translated into our labour hours,” said one shift supervisor.