While in Chicago I also attended the Mom Central Starbucks event. We took a trolley from the hotel to the beautiful Oak & Rush Starbucks location. This is a unique place!
About is a special location:
Starbucks Oak & Rush Street Flagship Chicago, IL, United States
Casual seating downstairs caters to to-go customers, while a fireplace and sophisticated furnishings encourage lingering upstairs, where menu offerings are enhanced. Balcony seating capitalizes on the prominent corner location. Playing off the street name and organic shade-grown coffee is an oak tree mural with insets of coffee vignettes. A chalkboard panel showing featured coffee slides across a hand-painted world map highlighting the coffee belt. Still bearing screw holes, greenheart planks salvaged from boxcars clad walls, ceilings, and fixtures. A five-foot-diameter siren made of over 7,000 nail heads complements branding hand-painted onto reclaimed Chicago brick. {source}
I love the balcony seating!
The group of bloggers were treated to pastries and coffee demonstrations. Paul demonstrated using the same kind of coffee to make coffee in a French press vs. using the pour over method for iced coffee.
We learned the Four Fundamentals of coffee:
Makes sense!
Also, we were there to learn about Starbucks Rewards. I’m already familiar with the Starbucks Rewards program but there have been changes recently. Now you can enter the star bag code from bags of coffee to earn rewards for bags you buy in the store.
Here’s how My Starbucks Rewards works: earn Stars by paying with a registered Starbucks Card, the Starbucks mobile app or by entering Star codes from specially marked Starbucks products in the grocery store. We’ll treat you to your favorites on the house: free drinks, free food, free refills and more. If you go to Starbucks often, it’s your best deal.
Definitely get the Starbucks app for your smartphone. It’s great for checking your card balance, reloading it, checking rewards and even paying for your purchase. You can do all these things within seconds. I love technology!
While there, I heard in passing about Starbucks Evenings, which was new to me. I can see this being popular in the city. After 4pm you can order drinks and food from the evening menu available at select locations.
It was fun meeting other Mom Central bloggers and an enjoyable experience all around. They treated us to these nice gift bags that included a gift card, coffee, and extra star codes to get us started using #StarbucksRewards
I left Chicago with one (okay, two-one for a friend) of these. I like this YOU ARE HERE collection!
