Is the Costa Coffee Club still any good?

Costa Coffee have a loyalty scheme, the Costa Club. They made a lot of changes on 1st August 2023 so is it still any good? How much do you now need to spend to earn your ‘free’ coffee at Costa? Any new perks? How do you sign up? What are the rewards and benefits now? 

A few years ago we looked at the loyalty schemes of the big 3 coffee chains Costa Coffee, Starbucks and Caffe Nero. They have all made big changes since. Are the changes better for you?

In September 2021, The Costa Club made their first big changes, points magically changed to beans (40 points = 1 bean) and eight beans gave you a free drink. There were a few new things too like free cake on your birthday and get your free drink faster when you use a reusable cup instore. Find out everything you need to know about the old Costa Coffee loyalty scheme here.

In August 2023 Costa made more changes to the Costa Club loyalty scheme. The main change is you now need to collect 10 beans to earn a free coffee! You’ll still receive one bean for any hand crafted drink (any size) but that means you now need to buy 10 drinks to earn your free one! If you bring your own reusable cup, you’ll receive two beans for every hand crafted drink (any size) which means you will get your free coffee after 5 visits. Read on for the latest perks for the Costa Club.

Find out where your nearest Costa Coffee shop is. Remember there are also plenty of Costa machines in garages and shops (like WH Smith) too.

How does the Costa Coffee loyalty scheme work?

The Costa Club loyalty scheme is quite simple. You collect beans then you use those beans to get free coffee. You can have a physical card and/or download the app and use that. You can get a card in store which you can register here with Costa Coffee . I recommend you download the app, especially via referral use code 2FGM8 – you get 5 free beans (so do I!) when you start using the app.

For every Barista made hot or cold drink you buy, you’ll receive 1 bean. If you buy 3 Barista made hot or cold drinks, you’ll receive 3 beans. Collect 10 beans and you earn a free Costa coffee or cold drink.

What do the changes to the Costa Loyalty scheme mean for you?

The new scheme is certainly simple. Buy drink, earn beans, spend beans on drink.

You only earn beans when you buy Barista made hot or cold drinks. If you buy a small Cappuccino for £3.50, you will get a free bean. After 10 beans you’ll earn your free coffee. That’s 10 drinks @ £3.50 each = £35.00! I only have Oat milk which makes it £3.95 so I’ll spend £39.50 before I can earn my free coffee.

The original Costa loyalty scheme gave you 5 points per whole £ spent, that was a whopping 25 drinks @ approx. £2.65 per drink before you got a free coffee. You would have spent £66.25 for a free coffee! In Sept 2021 it changed to you only need to buy 8 drinks to get the free one, so only £21.20. The price has gone up quite a bit since then and you certainly need to spend a lot more to earn your free coffee.

You can earn 2 beans per Barista made hot or cold drink by using your own reuseable cup. This used to be a 25p discount. So after five Barista made hot or cold drinks you get a free coffee.

Now you can’t earn beans on food or non crafted drinks. So if you’re popping in for tea and cake then no benefits for you. Not a good change.

Bizarrely you earn beans on coffee from the self serve machines, obviously not barista made so that makes no sense!

Costa gives you free cake on your Birthday.

Free cake is a good thing and there’s no change to this perk. On the Costa Coffee app, go to “Settings”, then tap “View and edit birthday”. Enter your birthday and you will be automatically emailed a voucher for your free cake at Costa Coffee a few days before your birthday. You have seven days from your Birthday to claim your cake. You can choose which cake (subject to availability of course).

Have a look at the Costa Coffee Menu – which cake will you chose.

What happened to my old Costa loyalty points?

The old Costa coffee loyalty points were converted into Costa coffee loyalty beans in September 2021.

How else can you earn Costa coffee loyalty beans?

• Refer your friends . You can  get free points if you refer a friend through your app, my referral code is 2FGM8, use yours when you refer a friend. Just send them the Costa invite code through the app and when they’ve registered and they purchase for the 1st time with the app, you both receive 5 beans. Win win.

• Use the self serve machines. You can also earn points if you buy a coffee from the self serve machines you see everywhere. Just scan the QR code from the machine onto your app and hey presto! Quite a few people never scan the code so I tend to whip out my phone and scan this when their back’s turned! You only have a few seconds to do this before it disappears so be ready. Happy days, extra free beans. Costa drive throughs are also springing up everywhere too.

Best idea is to get as many of the free points as you can from downloading the app and referring friends. 5 free beans each for referring, free coffees will add up quickly.

How to get your free Costa coffee faster

You get double beans each time you use a reuseable cup instore, so that’s two beans per Barista made hot or cold drink. We found this a difficult habit to get into but now carrying a reuseable cup is second nature, like taking carrier bags to the shops. We keep ours in the car. Find a lightweight, collapsible coffee cup that isn’t a hassle to carry around.

We use this collapsible silicone cup with lid that clips to a bag. I chose orange and Tracy has the green one. Easy to rinse out and clean. Fab.

What exclusive rewards are there?

You can discover a Treat Drop surprise every month in the Costa Coffee app. This is relatively new. Plus you could receive bonus beans and money off rewards. My first Treat Drop was a cake for £1. That’s a saving of around £1.50. Not bad huh?

What if I only have a loyalty card?

If you want to sign up using a card you’ve picked up in store, use this link to join. It’s easy to do and you won’t miss out on anything once you’ve registered.

Can you collect Costa Club points at Airports?

We travel a lot and one of the things that always says ‘Welcome Home’ to us is walking out into the arrivals lounge and heading straight to Costa. After a long flight that’s the perfect #SmallJoy. You can collect The Costa Club beans at the Airport, just the same as in anywhere else in the UK.

Can you collect Costa Coffee Club points abroad?

We have not found a Country yet that you can collect or use your Costa Club beans. We’ve tried in Cyprus, Spain, France and Germany. Do let us know if you have found anywhere outside the UK that works. You can still enjoy the coffee but no points. This is one of our favourite Costa’s with a view – In Protaras, Cyprus.

What other benefits are there to joining the Costa Club? 

Costa offer “Click & Collect”  where you can order ahead using your app and skip the queue. You need to register your payment card, Apple Wallet or Google Pay to your app. You can also select your collection time. Although it feels a bit wrong to jump what is usually a long queue, more and more people are doing this so snooze you lose. Everyone in the queue is waiting their turn and you just go straight to the front and pick up your coffee which has your name on it. In theory this is great but usually you still have to wait while everyone else is looking at you! We Brits love a queue.

There are also bonus offers for Costa Coffee Club members These are random (infrequent) deals and bonus beans that pop up if you have your notifications on.

And Costa Club competitions ‘Santa’s Surprise’ – Costa Christmas Campaign which runs every year in December is pretty good.  The last campaign was – Make a purchase of £1 , scan your Costa Coffee App, tap on Santa’s surprise icon that appeared in your App within 48 hours of purchase. Prizes started from 5 Costa Coffee beans up to free coffee for a year. There was also a weekly prize draw during this Promotion Period. All entrants were also entered into a prize draw to win a 3 night Ice Hotel Experience in Sweden for 2 adults. We won 10 free coffees between us.

Can you earn Costa Coffee beans on take away coffee?

Yes you can earn beans and use your beans to pay in store or when you order through the App.

You can also earn beans at Costa Express machines. Order your drink as normal and then open your Costa Coffee app and select ‘Machine’ at the top of the app. Whilst your drink is being made, tap ‘Collect beans only’ and scan the QR code displayed on the machine’s screen.

At the moment you cannot redeem beans at the Express Machines.

Can you buy Costa Coffee online?

You can buy Costa coffee online and enjoy their coffee at home bags for your coffee machine or pods for your Tassimo or Nespresso. Amazon often do offers and if you have Prime there’s free delivery.

We love these Tassimo Latte pods are £26.18 for 40servings and the Americano pods £25.95 for 80 servings (on offer – usually £27.50)

For the Nespresso machine The Americano pods are £20.32 for 80 servings.

For coffee machines a 200g bag of roast and ground Costa coffee is £8.39, there are cheaper ‘Costa’ coffees but we tried one that was half the price that said Costa but it was not the official one, and was not great.

What about other Costa Coffee deals?

Costa Coffee have some decent deals in store anyway so if you are going, time it right and save a bit of money this way. There are not so many food offers now that Costa is serving M&S food. Offers include.

• Uber Eats – Order from Uber Eats using your Costa Club app. Sometimes there is an offer for free delivery on orders over £10 but when I tried this it added 10% service charge and £3.79 for delivery!
• Deliveroo – Order from Deliveroo using your Costa Club app. There is a £10 minimum plus £3.49 delivery charge.
• Just Eat – Order from Just Eat using your Costa Club app. You can sometimes get free delivery for orders over £10 otherwise it’s up to £2.49 for delivery with no minimum order.
• Free Non-Dairy Milk Upgrade – You can currently upgrade to Soya Milk at no extra cost. Almond and Oat Milk cost 45p extra. There was a time when all Non-Dairy upgrades were free! Tut tut.
• Double points at participating Co-op stores. Pops up every now and then. Unfortunately this is no longer available.
• Costa Feedback – Amazon vouchers There was a regular giveaway where 2 winners a month were drawn at random and all you needed to do was provide feedback on your store visit to feedbacktocosta.co.uk. Each winner received a £50 Amazon Gift Card. I’ll update this when the next draw is live.
• Random offers. Other offers pinging their way to me have included double points over the weekend or double points at the Costa Express machines over the weekend.

What are the Costa Coffee cup sizes

They do 3 main cup sizes

• Small is 8 fl oz (240ml)

• Medium is 12 fl oz (355ml)

• Large is 16 fl oz (473ml)

So is the Costa Coffee Club worth joining?

So that’s the Costa Club investigation. If Costa coffee is your favourite or most convenient coffee shop then definitely join the club.  And if you’re looking for free coffee, now you know how to get it quicker.

Even if you don’t go to Costa much then definitely sign up using our referral use code 2FGM8 and get your 5 free beans. You only need 3 more with a reusable cup to get your free coffee. And you’ll get free cake on your Birthday. Win win.

Have a look at how and where can you get free coffee at other places and subscribe to our blog to get post updates. Take a look at our posts on the loyalty schemes of Starbucks and Caffe Nero. How do they compare? What do you order at Costa? Mine is always a Cortado. #SmallJoy

FAQs

What do you need to know about Loyalty cards?

Loyalty cards are designed by stores for their benefit first and foremost. Learn how to play the loyalty card game to make sure you get as much benefit as you can in an article posted here soon.

Have a read of all our store Loyalty Card reviews and let us know which you use and which benefits you enjoy most.

• Sainsburys Nectar card review
• Co-op loyalty card review
• Tesco Clubcard review
• Ikea Friends and Family Card review
• Costa Coffee loyalty card
• Cafe Nero loyalty card
• Starbucks rewards
• M&S Sparks loyalty card review
• Boots Advantage card review
• Also check out this fab post from CashbackCollette with the 60+ Best Loyalty Schemes in the UK

What else can you get for free?

Have a look around our site, there’s plenty of free and £1 deals you can enjoy, including.

• The Audible free trial – is it worth trying?
• The Quidco free money hack
• Fly to Cyprus (or any Europe) for £1
• How to Invest £1 and earn over £100
• What’s fab about the Readly magazine app? + free trial?

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