Waitrose to end free coffee without purchase offer

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – British supermarket chain Waitrose has advised its loyalty scheme members that from 3 April 2017, all customers will be required to make an in-store purchase before collecting their daily free tea or coffee. 
 
Previous terms of the generous loyalty deal enabled customers to collect a free hot drink whether they had purchased anything from the store or not, and frustrations had arisen from shoppers encountering big queues at the self-service coffee machines.
 
In a message to its loyalty members today, the company said - ‘Our myWaitrose free tea and coffee offer is one of the ways we thank our customers for shopping with us - and we want all our customers to be able to enjoy a free hot drink when they shop with us in our branches.’
 
Waitrose, part of the John Lewis Partnership, currently operate over 350 branches across the UK and has a 5.3% share of the market making it the seventh largest grocery retailer in the UK.