Starbucks set to enter Web3 space with NFT collections

During its fiscal Q2 2022 earnings call this week, the coffee giant said that NFTs can help Starbucks extend its concept of the “third place”, that is, a place between home and work where people can feel a sense of belonging over coffee.

The.company has brought in Adam Brotman, the architect of its Mobile Order & Pay system and the Starbucks app, to help serve as a special advisor on the project.

“Emerging technologies associated with Web3, and specifically NFTs, now enable this aspiration and allow us to extend who Starbucks has always been at our core,” Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Brady Brewer said.

“We are creating the digital third place. To achieve this, we will broaden our framework of what it means for people to be a member of the Starbucks community, adding new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models that we see developing in the Web3 space.”

Starbucks will build out its NFT community on an “environmentally sustainable” Web3 platform, although it didn’t indicate what sort of blockchain technology would be involved with its NFT move.

It is, however, likely to be multi-chain or chain agnostic.

In a subsequent blog post, Brewer and Brotman commented: “Many people see NFTs as a new form of ownership of digital art, often traded in a highly speculative way.”

“While that’s been true on some level in the early days in the space, we are fascinated by how NFTs allow people to own a programmable, brandable digital asset, that also doubles as an access pass.”

They added: “We believe NFTs have broad potential to create an expanded, shared-ownership model for loyalty, the offering of unique experiences, community building, storytelling, and customer engagement.”

“And, while doing so also being a source of accretive business that can benefit a number of stakeholders in the process, while creating a new type of digital ecosystem to complement Starbucks current digital platform offering.”

The plan is to create a series of branded NFT collections, the ownership of which initiates community membership, and allows for access to exclusive experiences and perks.

Brewer and Brotman concluded: “We plan to take a phased approach here, willing to move fast, experiment, learn and collaborate.”

“We plan to start with our first NFT collection, membership and community later this year, based on coffee art and storytelling.”

“It will come with a host of unique experiences and benefits, worthy of a genesis NFT collection for Starbucks.”

“And this first collection will form the core digital community and backbone against which we hope to build future collections and collaborations – all building on the same new ecosystem.”

Source: Retail Tech Innovation Hub