Starbucks Odyssey Brews Smoother Second Serving of NFTs With ‘First Store’ Collection

Featured SpeakerYat Siu

Co-Founder and Executive ChairmanAnimoca Brands

Starbucks Odyssey’s first drop of non-fungible tokens (NFT), which the coffee company calls “Stamps,” hit a few bitter notes. But the coffee company’s Web3 loyalty program did what beta programs are supposed to do and let the company learn from its mistakes.

Starbucks’ loyalty program released “The Siren Collection,” its first limited-edition NFTs on March 9 to members of the invitation-only beta. Despite the limited number of people in the program, the drop of 2,000 Stamps priced at $100 was met with such high demand it crashed parts of the Starbucks Odyssey website. Many members complained of error messages and other issues preventing them from buying one of the NFTs on Nifty Gateway.

“The Starbucks First Store Collection,” the second NFT drop, is an edition of 5,000 Stamps priced at $99. The program limited the initial sale to Odyssey members who had earned at least two unique Journeys Stamps and had them in their wallet at the time of the pre-sale. In addition, they restricted the sale to one per customer, down from the two per customer maximum of the original sale.

While the token-gated pre-sale was a good start to stemming the problems of last time, there were still members confused to find out they weren’t eligible, and in the first few minutes of the early-access period the Discord group was flooded with screenshots of people getting stuck on the second stage of the process and anxiously awaiting delivery. Reports of wait times in the Discord chat varied from 5 minutes to upwards of 15 minutes.

After the 3-hour pre-sale concluded, the rest of the Odyssey members were able to snag one of the roughly 2,800 stamps remaining. The general sale that followed also seemed to go smoother, with NFTs still available for purchase as of publication time.

Those who bought a “First Store” Stamp will see the art revealed on April 20. According to Starbucks, the art will focus on “commemorating 1912 Pike Place. Depicted as a multi-media collage of photos, in-store textures and prominent icons from our archives, this collection puts a modern spin on the historic landmark.” 1912 Pike Place is the location of the first Starbucks store in Seattle.

As of writing, secondary sales of The Siren Collection NFTs are hovering at a $460 floor price on Nifty Gateway and have done over half a million dollars in trading volume.

The Odyssey Program also recently revealed reward tiers for the points members have been collecting for completing Journeys and buying stamps.

Level 1 will require 1,000-2,999 points and reward choices are a virtual coffee class, a Starbucks coffee passport or to make a charitable donation to Feeding America. For 3,000-5,999 points, members reach Level 2 and can name a coffee tree, attend a virtual tasting paired with a bag of coffee or receive a Starbucks cold cup. Level 3 is for members with 6,000 points or more and rewards to choose from are a customized MiiR 360 traveler, 30 days of free drinks or an experience at a Starbucks Reserve store.

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