Pokemon GO and Starbucks Team Up to Bring PokeStops, Gyms, and Limited Edition Frappuccinos to North American Locations
Pokemon GO has announced that 7,800 company-operated Starbucks stores in the United States have been transformed into PokeStops and Gyms! With these physical locations now officially featured at around 3/4 of the Starbucks locations open in the US, even more PokeFanatics can get together and play! To celebrate the launch, a special Pokemon GO Frappuccino is now available for a limited time!
The drink itself is a frozen raspberry and blackberry-flavored version of the Vanilla Bean Frappuccino and will be featured at the store locations that are listed as PokeStops and Gyms. So whether you’re out PokeHunting or just picking up coffee, you can get those sweet, sweet in-game Pokeballs and recovery items, or take down a Gym while you’re at it.
Pokemon GO quickly became a cultural phenomenon over the summer, and many businesses were booming from the additional traffic brought by Pokemon GO players, so It wasn’t long before Niantic and these businesses teamed up to make more money off of the app users. As a part of the large-scale sponsored location feature Pokemon GO has been implementing, much like when we saw the thousands of McDonald’s locations that magically became PokeStops and Gyms when the game launched in Japan, Starbucks intends to act like a real-life lure for people coming in to play the game. Since charging stations and espresso shots are always available, now you can literally stay up all night and play.
Niantic has come a long way since the constant server crashing, removed distance features, and lack of all 150 Pokemon. Even though the augmented reality app’s popularity has declined since its initial craze, it still remains in the top 30 games in the iOS and Android app stores.