Starbucks to offer free pastries

It's looking to be a good spring for Canadian coffee lovers.

This week, Starbucks announced that on March 23, it will offerCanadian customers free pastries between opening time and 10:30 a.m. local time or until pastries run out.

"It's an opportunity to surprise and delight our customers and, hopefully, get a few new ones," said Kathleen Cook, category manager for Starbucks Canada.

She said the company's food sales have been "steady."

The pastries will be given to anyone who has a printed coupon or a coupon displayed on a hand-held device. The coupon can be downloaded on the Starbucks.ca website, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

The move comes just over a week after McDonald's wrapped up a similar promotional campaign, in which it gave away free coffee even to non-paying customers. The promotion ran for the two weeks following the Olympicsand coincided with the popular Roll Up the Rim contest at the Tim Hortons doughnut shop chain.

Thatpromotion, which involves rolling up the rim of a coffee cup to see whether a prize has been won, began on March 1, 2010. It ends when specially marked coffee cups run out.

Cook says the pastry give-away is only one in a line of successfulpromotions launched by the coffee retailer.

"We've done a lot of promotions in the past," she said. "There's an opportunity in the marketplace for everybody."