SEATTLE — Starbucks stores across the U.S. and Canada were hit by a computer glitch Friday and some stores responded by giving away free drinks until the system was fixed.
A supervisor in a New York City Starbucks on Spring Street said they can’t ring up sales or accept credit cards.
A barista in a San Francisco Starbucks said they were closed because of the computer problem.
“Yes it is true,” Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson told CNNMoney. “The point of sale cash registers are down in the U.S. and Canada. It is not a hack. It happened during a typical daily menu refresh on the system. Something went wrong and they are working as quickly as possible to get them up.”
Delighted Starbucks fans were tweeting that some stores were giving away freebies until the computer problem could be fixed.
The lady at Starbucks gave me my drink for free. I believe in humanity.
— Diamond White (@diamondwhite) April 25, 2015
all Starbucks registers in California are down so we’ve been giving away free drinks the past 2 hours 😂
— Darian ❁ (@daarbeaar) April 24, 2015
Like….who’d have thought all 12,000 Starbucks stores in the US had a Death Star-style vulnerability and could all be taken down at once?
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) April 25, 2015
The computer glitch came on a day that Starbucks reported robust sales.
The coffee chain said Friday that sales and profits for its fiscal second-quarter that were up nearly 20% from a year ago and ahead of Wall Street’s forecasts.
