A TikToker’s plea for an explanation of the Starbucks app’s functionality has garnered viral attention online, with some commenters coming to the rescue with possible answers.
In the video that has amassed 36,500 views on the platform, @funnybunnylover100 asks her audience members if they can tell her why some items are not available on the Starbucks app for mobile order, but she can still order them in-store.
“If you work at Starbucks or if you know the answer to this question,” she says. “Can someone tell me why every single time I tru to mobile order lately the drinks that I want are saying that they’re sold out at the store, but they’re not sold out, because I go there and I go through the drive thru and I ask if they have the certain drink that I want, and they say they do.”
Her initial thoughts were that the locations might be out of some more specific ingredients, but that’s not the case in-store.
“It’s not that they don’t have almond milk or they don’t have this certain syrup that I want, or flavoring,” she says. “I don’t know why it would say that it’s sold out.”
Other commenters shared that they were having similar problems with their Starbucks app.
“Last week I couldn’t order a double shot on ice but I could order an iced americano,” a commenter wrote. “Make it make sense.”
“Mine tells me there’s no Starbucks in the area, while I’m in the parking lot,” another commenter wrote.
Some commenters, either outright claiming or implying that they are Starbucks baristas, replied to @funnybunnylover100 to help clarify what she might be experiencing.
“When we are low on product we turn off those items on mobile order to prioritize the people in out drive thru or in our cafe first,” one commenter wrote.
“I am a former Starbucks employee, when we used to put the items as sold out on the Avenue and not through the drive-through, it means that they only had enough product to get through the day with the drive thru,” another commenter wrote. “They can’t stop any mobile orders nor cancel them if we don’t have the item in stock.”
Current and former Starbucks employees let the cat out of the bag—if it’s not on the app, it might be available in-store.
“The stores are able to manually select that it’s sold out on the app, typically because they are low on the product and don’t want a huge influx of mobile orders where they may not have enough to make them,” a commenter wrote. “Whereas if you only order that drink in store they can kind of control how much they use.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to @funnybunnylover100 via Instagram DM, as well as to Starbucks directly via email regarding this issue.
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