Old (current) benefit: you're correct.

New benefit: still unlimited drinks on shift and a drink 30 minutes before and after, but no more free drinks on your days off, just a 30% discount. You can only get food markouts on your shift and 30 minutes before and after, but you can get a total of 7 food markouts per week (Monday-Sunday).

That's how the drink benefit worked before covid, and before covid you only got one food markout per shift and that was it. So they're ending a benefit that was originally intended to be temporary, but it's still a pretty crappy thing to do after partners have come to rely on it and most partners started working after it was implemented.

The rule about waiting in line to order your drinks and not making your own drinks has always technically been in place, but lots of stores don't enforce it.

The original mark out system was that we could mark out 1 food item and any drinks during and half an hour before and after our shift. On days you didn’t work, you would get a 30% discount if you came in. The extended COVID benefit mark out made it so that instead of the 30% discount, you could get one free drink and food item on your days off. The new system is essentially the same thing as the old system. The only thing that is different is that you can mark out more than one food item while you’re working, you just can’t exceed more than seven items in one week. If you come in on your days off, you will only get the 30% discount just like we did before the pandemic. So previously, if you only worked 3 days a week, you could only mark out 3 food items that entire week and it had to be during or 30 mins before or after your shift. Now if you work 3 days a week, you could potentially mark out 2-3 food items during your shifts as long as it doesn’t exceed 7 a week. Lmk if this makes sense. The free food and bev benefit was not a permanent benefit Starbucks offered. It was a benefit that started at the beginning of the pandemic.

When did they change this?

I think it's also important to remember that we have pretty much always had to get in line, mark out drinks, and wait for them to be made for us. That isn't changing, just some managers and shifts are okay with partners marking themselves out/making their own drinks instead

It’s NEVER been unlimited drinks during your shift. 1 drink within 30 minutes prior to your shift, 1 drink during a rest break or lunch and 1 drink within 30 minutes after your shift. It’s all in the partner guide.