Dive Brief:
- Starbucks updated the FAQ of its non-fungible token loyalty website, Starbucks Odyssey, on Friday to say “Starbucks Odyssey Beta must come to an end,” and that the program in its current form will shut down on March 31.
- Starbucks claimed the end of its Odyssey beta program, a limited offer of collectible digital tokens that was announced in September 2022, was necessary to “prepare for what comes next as we continue to evolve the program.”
- Participants have until March 25 to complete “journeys,” or sets of tasks that allow them to win NFTs. Those NFTs will be transferred onto an external, secondary marketplace called Nifty with the end of the program. The Discord Server, a type of chat server commonly used by online communities, for the Odyssey will shut down on Tuesday.
Dive Insight:
Starbucks launched its NFT marketplace after the daily trading volume for digital tokens had already begun to slide, and framed it as a part of its brand reinvention. The NFTs rely on blockchain technology — a type of append-only database that requires massive computing power and is difficult to scale, according to Forbes.
In Starbucks’ case, the scale of customer adoption for the digital stamps was never particularly clear, though the chain restricted the number of NFTs it issued as part of its beta test, with the first tokens going to a handful of selected participants.
The FAQ offers no specific hint of the future for Starbucks Odyssey, with the company stating only that it has collected substantial customer feedback and “look[s] forward to bringing these learnings to a broader audience.”
In the 18 months since announcing Starbucks Odyssey, the coffee giant did not respond to multiple requests from Restaurant Dive to share specifics on the performance of the technology. On Monday, Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request to clarify if the chain has plans to use NFTs in its loyalty infrastructure in the future.
NFT hype was a common feature of tech optimism during the pandemic period, when low interest rates increased the availability of money. As the Federal Reserve raised rates to tighten the monetary supply and slow inflation, the volume and value of NFT trading collapsed.
The digital tokens, which were used in a variety of pump-and-dump schemes, according to Canadian documentarian Dan Olson, had many features reminiscent of speculative assets: little real world use, prices based on the assumption of future adoption, media hype and a strong correlation with a period of easy money.
