MILAN – Starbucks is set to release its first — in a planned series — of branded NFT collections, in a bid to replicate the sense of community and shared ownership that is central to the brand’s identity in the metaverse.
“If you look at the companies, the brands, the celebrities, the influencers that are trying to create a digital NFT platform and business, I can’t find one of them that has the treasure trove of assets that Starbucks has – from collectibles to the entire heritage of the company,” said Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Brady Brewer, head of marketing at Starbucks, added, “The theme of this collection will be born out of Starbucks’ artistic expression, both legacy and newly created, as well as through world-class collaborations with other innovators and like-minded brands.”
“Over our 50-year history, we have amassed a treasure trove of assets that we can bring to bear in such an ecosystem – such as our rich heritage of coffee art and storytelling, our nearly 27 million active Rewards members in the U.S., a long line of store designs and Starbucks card art, and other fun ways to bring digital communities and experiences to life in the digital realm.
Starbucks also has a history of taking leading edge technology, innovating and making it accessible and approachable for mainstream audiences. Our history with loyalty, mobile payment, mobile ordering and Wi-Fi has taught us how to engage customers at scale to unlock opportunities. Here too, a Starbucks Digital Community Web3 platform has the potential to pioneer the combination of an approachable, widely accessible front-end, backed by the right blockchain technologies that are fast and inexpensive.
Our approach to blockchain technology – while ultimately likely to be multi-chain or chain agnostic – will certainly start with collections backed by blockchains and infrastructure that is consistent with our multi-decade commitment to sustainability.
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 from 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.”
The announcement did not detail whether the brand would be partnering with any existing brands or platforms to create this new “Third Space,” nor which blockchain technology would be attached to the new NFTs.
