The $1,750 Coffee Mug
I drink coffee. A. Lot. Of. Coffee.
It was only January 11. The travel mug my daughter gave me for Christmas was only three weeks into its new life as my go-to morning cup of joe and it had already cracked under normal use.
No problem, I thought. It’s still close enough to Christmas that Caribou should still have this mug on their shelves and three weeks falls within my arbitrarily assigned grace period for exchanging a gift item. But it wasn’t that clear cut.
The first Caribou barista I approached was non-plussed by the cracked mug and asked if the mug was purchased at that location. Since it was a gift, I didn’t know.
“Did you have a gift receipt?”
“Well, no, I’ve been using it just fine for about three weeks.”
“Then your daughter will need to take it back to the store where she bought it and fill out a form.”
“Hmmm, OK, I’ll work with her and figure it out.”
At this point, Willa didn’t know her gift to me had cracked and I rather wanted to keep it that way. Why involve a 12-year-old kid who was excited to give her dad a travel mug that fit his picky request (ceramic, no plastic, not overly branded)? So I didn’t give up. Since there was another Caribou near my office, I thought I’d give them a try.
“Hi, this was a gift over Christmas and it’s already got these cracks in it.”
“Oh! I’m sorry that happened. Why don’t you grab one off the shelf and we can exchange it.”
“Really? That’s fantastic. While I’m here, may I get a light roast in there and a sausage biscuit?”
“No problem. Hey, since we’re not going to use this, you can have the top to the cracked mug in case you lose the other one.”
Huge difference in experience. This is another example of how a company’s culture does or does not translate down to the local level. I recently wrote about a similar disparity in experience between two Chipotle restaurants.
Why it matters
Like I said at the top, I drink a lot of coffee. I prefer the smaller 4th wave coffee shops when I can find one but also split my faithfulness between the Twin Cities’ three more convenient options: Starbuck’s, Caribou and Dunn Brothers. I’m fickle and a coffee shop’s atmosphere indeed influences my decisions. It doesn’t take much for me (or anyone else) to drop a place from my list. Like making it a hassle to exchange a gift.
What’s a customer worth?
This mug cost $19.99, but what’s the value to have it in my hand? By rough estimates, I easily spend $1500 on coffee in a year. Good God? I do? Never mind… And along with that mug at Christmas, my wife also bought Caribou gift cards for all the teachers and coaches in our kids’ lives — another $250.
$1,750.00 > $19.99
And that’s just one year. Maybe that first barista was following standard practice but I will make it a point of not going into that Caribou again. I can forgive a lot of shortcomings: Caribou has a ridiculous loyalty program, and their web experience is dated by at least a decade. But the boots on the ground, the front line of your brand experience needs to be spot on. What did the first barista do wrong? Technically, nothing, if we were all machines. But we’re humans and we’re still driven by irrational emotions and impulses. I can’t rationally explain why a small slight like this impacts my future patronage. It just is.
By the way, I’m writing this in my new favorite Caribou and I drove past a Starbuck’s to get here. If anyone at Caribou HQ reads this, you might want to give the peeps at the Southwest Transit Caribou a gold star and a shoutout. Because of their human actions, I’ll continue letting Caribou feed my habit.
