Get ready for a side of chaos with your coffee.
Every Thursday through the month of September, Starbucks is offering its rewards members a buy one get one free deal (BOGO) for every fall beverage they purchase after 12 p.m. local time.
On the first Thursday of this month the USC Village’s Starbucks was mobbed by a crowd of customers taking advantage of the company’s deal. Two employees said the Village store was the second busiest cafe-only Starbucks in the country that day.
An employee working at Starbucks on the busy Thursday said, “people were literally standing on the chairs at Starbucks just to hopefully get a vantage point of their drink and maybe spot it.”
The Starbucks employees requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. They provided photos and other documentation for Annenberg Media review.
The employees said that in one 30-minute time period, the store processed more than 200 transactions. “People were pushing through each other, people were getting rude,” one said.
Another employee said that on the second week of the fall deal, “we heard that our sales for the week were upwards of over a hundred thousand. So over the course of the week, we had genuinely made, just our store, over $100,000.”
The employees said the store keeps breaking records for California and that a manager congratulated them that day.
Starbucks would not confirm that the Village Starbucks was the second busiest store on the first day of the fall deal. A representative told Annenberg Media that in the event any store achieved this milestone, there would not be any internal communications sent out recognizing it.
As a publicly listed company, Starbucks also said that the only financial figures they release are through their quarterly earnings results.
“Starbucks is a staple in a lot of college students’ lives, especially because caffeine intake is so important,” said Emily Ley, a sophomore studying applied math.
Some USC students believe the reason the Starbucks at the USC Village is so popular and busy is because of the lack of sleep among college students, so they need the caffeine to “kick in,” according to Christina Guerrero, a junior studying psychology at USC.
“Starbucks is more accessible,” said Guerrero. “Personally I like Starbucks better than Dunkin. It’s stronger. I’ve only had [Dulce] once, there’s more options at Starbucks than there are at other places.”
Maddy Brown, a junior studying journalism, said, “If you’re living in the USC Village, why would you go off campus to get Starbucks. It’s more affordable than Dulce so I can see why they’re picking Starbucks over that.”
“Also it’s a college campus so everyone can just walk to it because it’s so easy and close,” Ley said.
Katie Jung, a sophomore studying fine arts, said, “There’s like a thousand students and we all just go to the same one so that’s probably why [Starbucks at the USC Village] is so busy.”
“I think [Starbucks] is just so convenient for students,” Brown said. “They need their sugary coffee drinks to get through the day. Especially with the announcement of the two fall drinks - the buy one get one free - students just need to go and get their coffee, and they don’t have a lot of other convenient places to go.”
There also is a smaller location on campus, but the Starbucks located at the USC Village proves to be the most easily accessible source of caffeine for most USC students.
“You have USC students coming in here, but it’s also open to the public,” said senior Faith Smith. “People who work in the University Park area come here for grocery shopping and to run errands, so I think that’s probably why they get a wave of a lot of people.”
But the consequence of the BOGO free deal at the USC Village Starbucks was absolute chaos.
“I actually ended up never getting my drink,” said Shei Marcelline, a graduate student studying journalism who was at the USC Village Starbucks on Sept. 7. “I waited, I shuffled through the 60 people just to look at all the names and didn’t see mine. And you know, that’s my break. So I had class and was like, ‘I’m gonna leave coffeeless, but it’s okay.’”
Although she almost never goes to Starbucks when off campus, Marcelline said she frequents the USC Starbucks locations about three times a week due to its convenience and reliability. There were about 10 workers that day, eight behind the counter and two handing out drinks, said Marcelline.
Guerrero, who works at another store in the Village, said, “The other day I was working and it was Thursday and one of our co-workers waited over an hour for his coffee - because of the deal on Thursdays.”
For the entire month, Starbucks goers can enjoy a variety of their specialty seasonal drinks such as the famous Pumpkin Spice Latte, Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai Latte, and Iced Apple Shaken Oatmilk Shaken Espresso.