Going to Starbucks has become a social thing to do. Some Starbucks let you use their super fast internet and other Starbucks are a good place to meet like-minded people but let's be honest not everyone can afford to go out and buy a $3 cup of coffee or a $5 Frappuccino everyday. Let's also consider that you might be homeless or maybe you're traveling on a very low budget and Starbucks just happens to be the place you do your internet activity.
That being sad it's NOT very acceptable to be hanging out at Starbucks without having bought something.
Also many people don't know that you can get a coffee refill for only $0.50 if you have a Starbucks cup. And for those of you that are brave here's an added bonus!
If you can fish out the Starbucks cup out of the trash without security guard catching you first of course that does happen to... You can take it to the bathroom and rinse it out and use your $0.50 to get yourself a cup of coffee and hopefully get a new lid, or for those of you hipsters you can even go lidless!
Here's my little hack to not only getting a free tasty drink but this could really save some people considering a lot of people are out of work nowadays and have very little money to eat and do things with. A few hundred extra calories could get you through a tough day especially if you don't have a dime.
I used to find myself going to Starbucks with my own cup and drinking the milk that they have for free so that I wouldn't be on an empty stomach for the rest of the day. ( if you find yourself in this boat and you want to go to the nearest Social and family Services building in your area and apply for free EBT or SNAP benefits which is basically food stamps)
Now onto the guide!
First you need to go to the register and politely ask the barista if they would please give you a cup of water. Now I like to be honest considering I don't usually have any money and I let them know ahead of time that I can't afford to buy a cup of coffee today but I am rather thirsty so if it is not too much trouble I would like a cup of water easy ice.
If I happen to have some change in my pocket I do tip the workers. ( try not to tip pennies as this can cause the employees more stress than anything)
Once you obtain your cup of water preferably venti you're going to want to head over to condiment station and remove the lid. Add as many packets of sugar as you can tolerate in one drink.
I prefer just one packet of the Splenda which is dextrose based and it dissolves rather nicely in the water where as the other sugars sort of settle at the bottom don't really dissolve.
Then you are going to want to add some flavor. I found about 10 dashes of cinnamon powder about five dashes chocolate powder and just a dash or two of vanilla and Nutmeg make for quite a tasty, relatively healthy free drink that doesn't look like a free drink at Starbucks.
Let's be real It can be quite embarrassing to sit down at Starbucks for 2 or 3 hours while using my wifi, only sipping on a cup of water or worse with no drink.
That's just about the best way I can think of to identify yourself as being homeless is sitting at Starbucks using the Wi-Fi without a drink. So use my hack!
Starbucks won't be going out of business anytime soon thank God for that.
You can even add some milk if you can tolerate it and it makes for quite a tasty drink.
ENJOY!