Starbucks Free Coffee Day

4 December 2008

Every year in December, Starbucks Coffee will distribute free coffee for a certain period of time in a day to raise funds for charity. This year, it was in support of The Salvation Army. There is no specified amount of donation and you are free to order any drinks.

Decided to visit Rahayu at the Marina Square outlet. There was a long queue that greeted us as we walked towards Starbucks. The following photo shows the long queue and Hock Rong posing.

Surprisingly, the waiting was less than 15 minutes. I'm impressed with the efficiency of the staff and enjoyed my default Starbucks drink -- Chocolate Chips Frappucino. Ever since god-knows-when, I have been persuading people to snap moments into memories. Hock Rong proudly used his new 8.1 megapixel Sony Ericsson phone to capture our group photo.

I missed the big Elmo which was already removed when we walked past the atrium of the mall. Anyway, Ming Choo snapped me and Rahayu as we walked along Sesame Street.

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I thought the idea of giving free coffee and raising funds for charity is a good example of corporate social responsibility. Many companies do charity, no doubt. But the way they carry such activities matter.

Recently, KFC has been advertising that with every set of Christmas Buddy Meal sold, it would donate $0.10. Ya, I didn't place the decimal at the wrong place. 10 cents! Buddy Meal?

I would call this gesture as "donation-washing", explicitly using charity as a face to drive in more business. Firstly, 10 cents is less than 1% of the selling price of the set meal. It is so little that advertising for the set meal could cost more than what they donate. Secondly, why only donate when Christmas Buddy Meal sets are sold? Outright and blatant advertising.

StarBucks has done more than just 2 hours of fund-raising. It has encouraged the spirit of giving...