Waitrose Just Dropped Their Most Controversial Loyalty Change Yet

By HOAR Team 8 June, 2025 6 mins read 90 Views

God, here we go again.

Waitrose has decided to shake things up with their loyalty scheme this week, and honestly? I can already hear the collective groan from shoppers across the country. They're rolling out this new "borrow a cup" trial that's either genius or completely bonkers - depending on which side of the checkout you're standing on.

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The £3 Gamble Nobody Asked For

So here's the deal. You can now borrow a reusable coffee cup from nine Waitrose stores (Newark's one of them, apparently) to grab your free coffee. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. You've got exactly seven days to return that cup or they'll slap you with a £3 penalty charge.

Three quid! For forgetting to return a coffee cup!

My mate Sarah texted me about this yesterday: "Watch me get charged £3 because I left their cup in my car boot for eight days." She's probably right, too. The woman can't even remember to return her library books on time.

When Green Initiatives Meet Human Nature

Look, I get what they're trying to do here. It's all part of their "circular system" to reduce plastic waste, and fair play to them for that. But they've clearly never met my mother-in-law, who still has shopping bags from 2019 floating around her house somewhere.

The whole thing works by tapping your MyWaitrose card, grabbing the borrowed cup, filling it up from their usual hot drinks machine, and then... remembering to bring it back within a week. That last bit's where it all falls apart for most of us mere mortals.

A Waitrose spokesperson said they're "currently conducting a reusable cup trial" that kicked off this week. They mentioned it's for MyWaitrose members redeeming free coffee or cafe customers buying drinks. Sounds straightforward enough until real life gets in teh way.

The Great Coffee Cup Saga Continues

This isn't even their first rodeo with coffee cup drama. Back in January, they changed their free coffee terms again (because apparently we needed more confusion in our lives). Before that, you had to actually buy something in store first to get your free drink - a rule that made sense when they launched it back in 2013.

Then came the great coffee perk resurrection of October 2022. They'd axed the whole thing in 2017 to "cut costs" (translation: someone in head office looked at the spreadsheets and had a panic attack). When it came back, staff were literally handing out cups after you paid for shopping. No minimum spend required.

Poor staff members probably thought they'd seen the worst of customer complaints.

Banana Gate Was Just the Beginning

Remember when people figured out you could buy a single banana to qualify for the free coffee? Martin Lewis even mentioned it, and suddenly everyone became a Waitrose regular armed with 30p and a reusable cup. The supermarket wasn't exactly thrilled about that particular life hack.

Last August they tried recyclable disposable cups in ten stores - another experiment in the ongoing "how do we give people coffee without destroying the planet" saga. They'd originally ditched disposable cups completely in 2018, which meant only the organized among us (so, basically nobody) could actually claim their free coffee.

Will This Actually Work?

Here's my prediction: this trial will create two distinct camps of Waitrose shoppers. Camp A will love the convenience and dutifully return their cups like responsible adults. Camp B will forget about the cup until they're hit with that £3 charge, then spend the next month complaining about it on social media.

The good news? If you're already bringing your own cup, nothing changes. As long as it fits under their self-service machine nozzle, you're golden. It's just us forgetful types who need to worry about accidentally collecting penalty charges like Pokemon cards.

Honestly though, I admire their persistence in trying to solve the coffee cup problem. Even if their solution feels like a test of human memory rather than environmental consciousness.

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