This is the oldest Starbucks partner card I’ve ever seen.  It belongs to a friend of mine who was a partner in the 1994 to 1995 era, hired by the University Village Starbucks.  She hasn’t been a partner for many years, but was recently cleaning out some old boxes and she stumbled upon these old cards.  I find it curious that in that era, the cards had an expiration date on them, and they were apparently re-issued to partners periodically.

I have a long and detailed blog post about the University Village Starbucks (store #302 – The second ever store), and I still highly recommend it:

By the way, it might not be obvious but my friend Cherilyn’s partner number was six digits.  I just thought it was interesting to see a vintage partner card, and thought you might like seeing it too.

***

***

This is an open thread and feel free to talk about anything Starbucks-related in the comments.  One of the funny things about this blog is that I get random emails through the “contact me” form, and also direct messages through twitter, and people just sort of pass on to me what they’ve heard is coming to Starbucks.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’ve gotten it right, or know what they’re talking about.  I enjoy getting those kinds of emails.  I assume that some of what I hear is early information about what might be coming soon.  About another one-third of the emails I get really should be routed to Customer Service.  I am sorry but if you’ve picked up a dry pastry at an airport Starbucks, there is nothing I can do about it.  I don’t mean to sound rude, but I am not customer service.  In the side column of this blog, near the bottom, I’ve added a link to customer service too.  And with the delayed launch of Casi Cielo, I’ve had at least three separate e-mails inquiring when Casi Cielo will be back in the stores.  It is coming soon!  It will be back next month.

Over the years, there have been tons of these emails. (Keep them coming!).  Some of them are quite entertaining.  Two years ago, a partner wrote me insisting that his store was testing face recognition technology at his Starbucks store.  I was left scratching my head, and I really was never sure if it was a serious email or if someone was pulling my leg.  From that email, I had the idea to write this April Fool’s Day blog entry.  That April Fool’s Day joke blog post was set in Pennsylvania because the partner who wrote me indicated that the testing was in that state somewhere.

More recently, I have received an email stating that orange syrup is coming back to Starbucks as a promo syrup this upcoming summer.  I really don’t know if that is true, but at least it makes some sense.  It’s been a long while since Starbucks offered orange syrup, and I think it was recently an international offering in Indonesia.  Once in a while, the syrup promotions seem to rotate from one country to another!  And then very recently, I heard that Starbucks was planning on changing their logo yet again.  I am disbelief at that one too, but maybe there is an April Fool’s Day joke in the making with the idea of a new logo: Starbucks to re-design her signature siren logo: Michelle Gass and Annie Young Scrivner vie for the opportunity to model for new Siren.  Oh god, I think Starbucks would hate me for that one.  In any case,  I think that many of the ‘tips’ I get turn out to be incorrect, so I would not hold my breath that the logo is changing again.

Anyway, I have rambled enough.  It’s your turn now…