Starbucks Chocolate Chunk Cookie
The Chocolate Chunk Cookie from Starbucks has 360 calories. So now that we know this, why don’t we combo it with something? I like dunking the Chocolate Chunk Cookie in a Venti Latte. The bitter flavor of the coffee mixes so well with the butteryness and sweetness of the cookie. Now not all Chocolate Chunk Cookies are created equal. Sometimes they are pretty hard by the end of the day. So that’s a double reason to dunk it in the latte. I don’t eat the cookie when I am trying to feel super healthy. I usually eat the cookie when I want to think about things. One thing that popped into my mind when I bit down on a soggy bite of cookie and latte was this: What happens to all the interest that is accrued from when millions of people load money on their Starbucks Cards? Let’s think about this for a second. If the average person loads $10 – $50 on their Starbucks Card, and there are millions of people who use them. Then we are talking about hundreds of dollars being loaded onto these Starbucks Cards per month. Now interest may not seem to be a huge deal to people like you or I. When we accrue interest on our savings accounts we probably make money in the dollar amounts per month, (that’s on a good month). But for a mega-corporation like Starbucks, when they have hundreds of millions of dollars given to them UP FRONT due to their Starbucks Cards something interesting happens. They are able to take that money and earn interest on it. I’m guessing they make anywhere from %1 – %8 per period on this money. So this means they can use the money they earned from the interest and put that money toward paying payroll or supplies or rent for their stores. And the money taken is basically pure profit.
The logic behind this is that the actual products that Starbucks gives its customers are created in bulk. So when they purchase milk for a latte they spend a great deal less then you or I do at the store. That being said, when a company like Starbucks has money up front it is a huge advantage to them. It is like giving them a loan that they don’t have to pay back in dollars. They repay the loan in drip coffee and lattes. And those items cost the company a fraction of their worth on the dollar.
So when I loaded $50 on my Starbucks card the other day it was basically trading the interest I could have earned on my own money, for the convenience and status of using a card. Now you may be thinking, “But Starbucks gives me a free drink every 15 times I buy my drink?” Yes, that is true. But when you factor that they can make any drink in the entire store for literally pennies, it makes you realize that the free drink is just incentive to get you to keep coming to the store.
Now, I’m not trying to convince you not to use a Starbucks card. The amount of money that you could earn on interest from using your card would probably be much less to YOU than the value of a Venti Caramel Macchiato. But what I am trying to bring to light, is that if you use multiple Cards that need to be reloaded like Starbucks Cards at the same time, you may be missing out on a great deal of interest.
-Tyler