Starbucks, MrBeast, and the race for Gen Alpha
Sarah Charles
January 9, 2026
YouTube screen
Gen Alpha now discovers brands mainly via creators, games and social platforms
Starbucks is embedding itself inside MrBeast’s Prime Video universe and Roblox instead of relying on cafés
Dutch Bros’ ultra-sweet drinks & merch drops are drive-thru hits with under-30s – pushing scarcity drops and “cute economy” tactics
STARBUCKS started out selling coffee. Then it sold a “third place”: sofas, playlists and the promise of belonging. Now, it is selling something stranger – screen time.
In January 2026 Starbucks will power Beast Games: Strong vs. Smart, a Prime Video competition series produced by MrBeast, YouTube’s most watched creator. Contestants will have 24/7 access to Starbucks inside a purpose-built “Beast City”, and viewers will be offered a limited-edition Cannon Ball Drink themed to the show’s challenges.
The aim is not subtle. MrBeast’s audience is overwhelmingly under 30, and skewing younger by the year. Starbucks is embedding itself inside entertainment rather than interrupting it.
This is not a whim; it’s triage. Starbucks has struggled to convert Gen Z into loyal, high-frequency customers. Mobile ordering congestion, rising prices and a muddled brand reset – its much-trumpeted “Back to Starbucks” strategy – have coincided with store closures and traffic softness in parts of North America.
Meanwhile Dutch Bros, a drive-thru-first chain with sugary, customisable drinks and limited-edition drops, has been winning younger consumers with speed, sweetness and scarcity. In youth culture, coffee is less a ritual than a canvas for candy.
Starbucks is responding by becoming more like a game studio. It has experimented with “Bearista Cup” frenzies, collectible merch, rainbow-coloured drinks and viral menu hacks. It has opened virtual stores on Roblox, where children who cannot yet buy coffee can still “shop” the brand. In South Korea it has staged collaborations that feel more sitcom than café (“Friends meets Starbucks”), leaning into fandom rather than footfall.
Gen Alpha – roughly those born after 2012 – consumes brands as media. YPulse and other youth-research outfits note that this cohort encounters brands first on YouTube, TikTok and gaming platforms, not on TV or high streets. Fast Company has described Starbucks as “the new Venmo” for Gen Alpha: a social prop used in videos, memes and peer-to-peer rituals, whether or not a drink is actually purchased. In this world, presence matters more than product.
“Instead of inviting a new generation to learn more about coffee rituals, the brand is doing the opposite: exploring existing needs and exporting their ritual to their context,” says Julia Makhalova-Chi, Head of Cultural Strategy and Founder at Brand Backstage.
“Building cultural relevance is a journey. All brands start somewhere, but a more mature approach is not to ‘tap into culture,’ but to become a cultural actor. A brand starts by identifying a specific need that only it can solve. The Starbucks × MrBeast partnership positions Starbucks as a cultural actor in Gen Z lives.”
The MrBeast tie-up is therefore not about selling coffees. It’s about colonising attention. The Cannon Ball Drink is a plot device. Starbucks is auditioning to be part of the Gen Alpha show.
Sugar, scarcity and the “cute economy”
If Gen Z taught marketers the power of drops, Gen Alpha is teaching them the power of “cute.” The aesthetic – pastels, plushies, mascots, emoji flavours – has fused with a scarcity playbook borrowed from fashion and streetwear. Limited runs, surprise releases and gamified queues turn beverages into collectibles, and the beverage becomes a token.
Dutch Bros has understood this better than Starbucks. Its menus lean unapologetically sweet, its drive-thru format suits impatient teens, and its merch drops convert coffee into community. Bloomberg has reported how sugary coffee and “Rebel” energy drinks have become drive-thru hits. Starbucks has tried to catch up with rainbow drinks and novelty cold foams, but its global scale makes nimble scarcity harder to engineer.
Hence the pivot to platforms that manufacture scarcity for you: Roblox offers finite digital items; Prime Video offers the anticipation of episodes; YouTube offers creators who can trigger viral content. A MrBeast episode can deliver the sort of cultural moment that a store window never will – at least in our current world.
“As part of the Beast Games, Starbucks developed a drink that could recharge Season 2 participants, while still keeping it cute,” says Julia. “The design borrows from kawaii culture: bright colors, shades of pink, made to look good when reviewed on TikTok and Instagram. The product is becoming a communication vessel for the brand, educating a new generation that Starbucks is a brand where review-worthy refreshments can be purchased.”
“Some may argue that MrBeast is too broad an influencer. But the reality is that Starbucks is a massive brand looking for reach. And when it comes to brands that dominate these cohorts, MrBeast and Amazon Prime – the platform hosting Beast Games – are hard to beat.”
Data suggest why the pivot is urgent. Kaleido Roasters’ Gen Z/Alpha marketing guides point to tastes shaped by convenience, health-consciousness, and digital trends – and that they are already forming brand preferences in their teen years.. Brands are shifting budgets from stores to creators and virtual worlds. YPulse reports that Gen Alpha’s brand discovery happens primarily via social media, games, and influencers; retail follows later, if at all.
This does not mean coffee is dead, but that it must lean into games. Starbucks seems to have understood this.
The risk is that this “cute economy” – where adorable collectibles drive big business – is fickle. Scarcity can trigger demand, but it also trains consumers to wait for the next drop – and while sugar drives frequency, it also pushes the brand toward energy drinks, where rivals already excel. Starbucks must play on a ground that is not its own.
A brand as a world
The deeper question is what Starbucks is becoming. Once it was a place; then it was an app. Now, it’s a universe with cafés, creators, games, shows, avatars and digital storefronts. This is not unique – Nike, Lego and Fortnite have made similar moves – but it is new for a coffee chain.
There are reasons to believe it could work. Embedded marketing is more credible to young audiences than interruptive ads. Creator partnerships travel globally at low marginal cost, and virtual stores seed future customers years before they have purchasing power. Leveraging scarcity, with limited drops and releases, also keeps a tired brand feeling current.
But the strategy also reveals a vulnerability. Starbucks is acting like a media company because it is losing its monopoly on meaning – one of the main criticisms it has received lately is that it has lost track of what it stands for. “It’s got to be more than slick marketing. There’s got to be a connection between the promises you make and the ones that you fulfill,” says Stephen Hahn, executive vice president of Reptrak, in a recent Forbes article.
The market has become tough: the “third place” is crowded, work-from-home has reduced daily café traffic, prices have climbed, and drive-thru upstarts and energy drinks have eaten into occasions. To remain culturally relevant, Starbucks must now rent relevance from creators.
The MrBeast partnership is therefore both a coup and a confession. It signals that Starbucks understands where attention lives, and also concedes that attention no longer lives in cafés – at least for the younger crowds..
It’s not yet clear whether Gen Alpha will graduate from Roblox lobbies to real lobbies. Brands that capture imagination early often convert later, but the path is not guaranteed. Adopting the slow ritual Starbucks once sold is a big leap for a generation raised on sugary rainbow drinks and creator worlds.
Starbucks may keep its cafés for those who still want them. For everyone else, it will offer a feed with seasonal arcs, character drinks, digital badges and collaborations that turn beverages into content.
“The biggest shift of the past few years is that brand narrative has become the go-to strategy,” says Julia. “Brands are learning how to tell one cohesive story across multiple platforms. Each platform has its own culture and context, so the real challenge is translating the story into each platform’s language.”
“I prefer the term ‘brand narrative’ over ‘brand world.’ I think you can see it as a brand world, but brand narrative is a more precise way to think about it. You build worlds, but you tell stories. And from that perspective, yes, brands are media companies. They tell stories.”
Coffee, in short, is becoming a storyline. Starbucks is betting that if it can write the script – with MrBeast or others as co-author – it can stay the hero of Gen Alpha’s feed. Whether that will convert into real store traffic further down the road remains to be seen.
Coffee Intelligence