Starbucks Unveil Plans To Make Money From Their Free Wi-Fi

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Starbucks has been busy in the past few months with in-store wireless. First, back in mid-June those here in the US began getting free and unlimited access, and then in July the free wireless made its way across our northern border into Canada. Now that Starbucks is offering free wireless to the US and Canada, you would likely guess that they plan to use the free access to keep customers in the store longer and hope they buy more coffee and treats. Well, that may be the case, but more interestingly are their most recent plans.

Starbucks has recently begun spilling the details of a new network they are planning to roll-out. And appropriately named, it will be called the Starbucks Digital Network, or SDN for short. According to the details so far, this network will be offering “exclusive and premium content” and come available at company owned stores beginning this fall.

As for what that “exclusive and premium content” may include, so far it is being described as being from “hand-picked content providers” such as Apple, The New York Times and Rodale.

“We know that people would pay us for this opportunity. But instead of asking them to pay us, we thought, ‘Let’s aggregate and compile the best content that [Starbucks customers] can’t get any where else’,” explains Brotman.

In short, Starbucks customers are not going to have to pay for access to this new network. And on top of that, it was also noted that “there’s no money changing hands between Starbucks and the content providers.”

So what gives, Starbucks is not making money, but at the same time those browsing the network (which really seems to be a fancy way to describe a web portal) will be subject to upsells from those previously mentioned customers.

Adam Brotman, who is the Vice President of Digital Ventures for Starbucks stated that;

“It’s a win-win for everyone.”

And as to why that will be the case;

“Content providers are giving away restricted access in the hopes of attracting new business, and Starbucks wins by having something completely unique and customers benefit from by getting something of value at no cost.”

But in the end, Starbucks may get some money from attracting new customers, but they are also going to be getting a revenue share courtesy of those content providers.