Find out how the coffee giants stacked up to one another on "National Coffee Day."
September 29th was "National Coffee Day" in the U.S., a chance to celebrate everyone's favorite stimulant. Whether you take it black or with cream and sugar, pour-over or French press, odds are that you drink coffee every day. Coffee is a dominant force in the US beverage market, with Americans spending roughly $30 billion per year on coffee. Here at Cintric, we saw how some of the big players in the coffee market were promoting National Coffee Day, and we wanted to know how consumers responded. Here's a summary of what we found, followed by write-ups for each individual brand:
Dunkin' Donuts offered a free cup of dark-roast coffee, as well as special perks to members of its loyalty program. See the full promotion here.
We calculated Dunkin's lift in visitation by taking their average visitation rate over several "normal" Tuesdays, and then comparing it to the visitation rate on National Coffee Day. We found that Dunkin' saw a roughly 6% increase in visits on the day.
Like Dunkin', Krispy Kreme offered a free cup of coffee for the occasion, but also threw in a free glazed donut. Customers seemed to respond, as we observed a lift in visitation at Krispy Kreme of more than 7%.
Tim Horton's celebrated by offering $1 cups of coffee, as well as a contest rewarding people for engaging with the brand on twitter:
We saw a lift of just over 3% in visitation to Tim Horton's. As might be expected, customers seemed to be more drawn in by the freebies at Dunkin' and Krispy Kreme than the discount at Tim Horton's.
Starbucks went with a less traditional approach to the event. They offered to donate 70 cents to coffee farmers-- enough for one coffee tree-- for every bag of coffee beans purchased. This approach didn't seem to generate as much lift as the other 3 chains we looked at, as Starbucks saw a visitation increase of just over 2%.
So, according to our findings, freebies were an effective driver of foot traffic. Of course, it's worth noting that an increase in visitation (or even revenue) isn't necessarily the goal for a promotion like this. Starbucks, for example, might want to maintain the image of its brand as a luxury product, and so hesitate to give it away for free. Still, visitation is a valuable metric, and can help brands understand the impact of their promotions in real-time.