As people who like to loiter in coffee shops most likely know, you can get refills of brewed coffee or tea at Starbucks for only fifty cents, and the refills are free once you’ve bought five drinks with the shop’s payment app or a registered gift card. What you may not know, though, is that your first drink doesn’t need to be a plain brewed coffee: it can be a fancy espresso-based concoction.

Maybe you knew this, but not everyone does, and even the fan site StarbucksMelody felt the need to share the news with readers that the refill policy hasn’t changed in recent years.

Wait, so how does this work? Does being able to get a “refill” of something that you didn’t get in the first place present an existential problem?

• You can have any beverage you want that’s on the official refill list, as long as you pay the refill fee or have sufficient rewards status. You don’t have to get a refill of the same beverage you had before.
• You can’t leave the store. Not even to step out on the patio, sometimes.
• There are no refills available to drive-thru customers, even if you just keep guzzling coffee and driving in circles around the Starbucks.

The Starbucks Refill Policy: First Beverage Can Be Anything [StarbucksMelody]

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