Want to drink better coffee with your Starbucks gift card? Tonx coffee will match it

The coffee wars are on. Taking a page from cellphone providers, Tonx Better Coffee Exchange, a micro coffee roaster, is offering subscribers and future subscribers a dollar-for-dollar trade-in of their Starbucks gift cards.

For those of us who received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, they’re offering a trade-in -- for Tonx coffee beans. You have to already be a subscriber -- or decide to become a subscriber -- to take advantage of the offer, but what a deal.

All you have to do is go to Tonx.org/better, enter a valid Starbucks gift card number and security code and your card will convert to Tonx subscription credit.

According to Tonx Chief Executive Nik Bauman, one in 10 Americans received a Starbucks gift card over the holidays. That means if you want to get in on this, you’ve got to move fast. Before they run out of coffee, all of which, I might add is carefully sourced and roasted.

Value? Thirty-eight dollars, the cost of a monthly subscription to Tonx (two shipments of 12-ounce bags of beans) will buy you 17 drip coffees at Starbucks or make 48 cups of coffee from your Tonx beans.

I didn’t get a Starbucks gift card for Christmas. Does the trade offer make me feel left out? Kind of. But hey, if I could only find that gift card my niece gave me, oh, about 10 years ago, I’d be in business. Little hope, though. I know I’ve seen it in a drawer somewhere, but where?

ALSO:

For the coffee geek: a subscription to Tonx Coffee

At the new Pellicola Pizza, N.Y. meets Naples in downtown L.A.

Superba Food & Bread to open in February with Jason Travi as chef

Twitter: @sirenevirbila