The Campaign
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is marking its 63rd anniversary with a multi-phase global campaign called Make It Yours, leaning hard into beverage customization as its core brand message. The program — rolling out across more than 1,200 locations in over 20 countries — asks customers, baristas, and creative collaborators to share personal rituals and flavor preferences tied to the chain's coffee and tea menu.
The campaign is structured in three stages. The first, "Kindling Brand Love," centers loyalty members and staff, inviting them to surface stories and memories connected to the brand. Global artists are folded in as well, sharing their go-to orders and the role the brand plays in their creative process — a move that leans into the specialty-coffee positioning CBTL has built since its 1963 founding in Southern California.
Customization as Sales Driver
The second phase, "Sharing The Love," hands the campaign to influencers and a new consumer cohort. The creative hook is CBTL's On The Rocks platform — a build-your-own format letting guests layer Crème Crowns, Espresso Shots, and Flavor Boosts into a personalized cold beverage. That kind of modular dispensed-beverage architecture is a direct parallel to the customization strategies convenience retailers have deployed at self-serve coffee bars and made-to-order beverage programs, where add-on attachment rates directly lift ticket averages.
The third phase, "Celebrating Together," brings the campaign back in-store with activations designed to drive traffic and generate social content simultaneously. Limited-edition anniversary merchandise — patches, keychain straps, and tote bags — is available throughout, with each piece designed to be further personalized by the buyer. Exclusive or scarce merchandise has proven effective at building visit frequency among loyalty-enrolled customers, a dynamic well-documented in convenience foodservice programs at chains like Wawa and Sheetz.
Context for C-Store Operators
For the convenience and fuel channel, the CBTL anniversary push is worth watching as a case study in dispensed beverage program marketing. The chain's emphasis on layered customization — letting the guest engineer their own cup from a defined set of premium modifiers — mirrors what leading c-store operators have done to trade consumers up from self-serve drip to higher-margin specialty formats. CBTL's parent, the Jollibee Group, brings substantial QSR scale to the brand's back-of-house operations, and the chain's 1,200-unit global footprint gives it meaningful data on what customization messaging moves volume.
The campaign runs through social platforms and at cbtl.com/makeityours, with the full three-phase arc designed to sustain engagement across the anniversary period rather than land as a single promotional event.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
