High street coffee giant Starbucks announced a new NFT project on the same day that it revealed that its unionized branches won’t be granted access to its student loan or savings account benefits.
But, despite being released simultaneously, the two separate announcements garnered very different levels of interest.
On Monday, the company announced its NFT project in partnership with Ethereum scaling platform Polygon as part of the company’s new rewards system, Starbucks Odyssey.
At the same time, the firm unveiled two new staff benefits, namely a student loan management service and a Starbucks savings account. The latter pays money to its staff for reaching specific milestones.
However, as reported by Law360, the new benefits won’t be extended to an estimated 325 unionized Starbucks branches. This is because, in July, the company said that it won’t offer any new benefits while bargaining with unions.
NFTs overshadow union coverage
The Starbucks Twitter press account distributed the benefits press release around 3pm PST, while the NFT partnership was announced twice, at 9am and 7pm PST. On both occasions, the NFT-related posts garnered far more interest and interaction.
Indeed, a search for ‘Starbucks’ on Google news shows roughly 73 articles about the Polygon NFT partnership but only 10 on the new benefits package. Even then, most headlines failed to mention the union exclusion.
The Starbucks benefit press release also failed to explicitly mention how unionized branches will not be receiving the benefits package, referring only to “eligible partners.”
Source : protos
