Before: 12 transaction than received 1 free drink. If every morning you buy 1 tall coffee (around $2.05 include tax) X 12 times, you will have spent $24.60 and can get free drink, say $10 is your drink (I use $10 as an example so we can compare to the new reward, of course you can do lot better example 1, example 2 ).
After 4/12/2016 the "new" reward for free drink is to earn 125 stars than get free menu item. That is 2 stars per $1 spent. Example you buy tall coffee $2.05 so you'll receive 4.10 stars. If you don't do the bonus or the "challenges" you'll have to spend $62.50 before getting your free menu item, OUCH!
What?!? Don't worry there are many target offers (or challenges) where you buy a few target item and earn bonus stars. I usually go for bonus that are 150 stars.
Example: buy 3 target items and get 150 stars.
5.74. sandwich
4.64. Espresso
4.32. Latte
$14.70 x 2 stars/$1= 29.4 stars + 150 bonus stars = 179.4 stars (more than what you need to receive a free drink)
$14.70 / 179.4 stars = $0.08 per star
If you work backward 150 stars * $0.08 per star = $10
In conclusion, if you do the challenges you can reach 125 stars pretty fast! A quick way to think about the challenge if you can get about 8 cents per star that is a good reward! Double star day (you get 4 stars per $1) is really a weak reward :)
I should include http://www.starbucksmelody.com/2016/02/22/its-official-all-new-my-starbucks-rewards-starting-april-2016/ as one of place I got my info on Starbucks :)
