Yes of course! A) Why waste a perfectly good drink? And #2 making people's visits nice by giving out drinks like that is sure to help your customer connection score

Edit to clarify after seeing others comment: I would give it away to one specific customer or partner rather than announce it to the cafe or something. Not making a scene or alienating people who don’t end up with a free one being the goal

I don’t do the “I have free drink for anyone who wants it” announcements that a lot of people do. I just put it near the hand off plane and then hand it to someone that I think looks like they might want it. Sometimes they decline, but I’ve gotten good at spotting the ones who will appreciate it more. I also do that in drive thru. I do it for two reasons. One, it’s more personal and a better connection than just shouting and throwing a drink into the crowd of livestock for them to fight over. And two, it reduces the chance that it will go to the person who may have purposefully asked for their drink the wrong way so that it would be made wrong and they would get to have both (ie the “that was supposed to be iced.”)

Yea we do it at my store! Sometimes we do that and other times we ask partners if they want it. But my manager said before that if theres a mistake drink that u give to a customer or to another barista or even if u have to remake a drink for someone cuz the first one was not liked or was made wrong, they have to be marked out in the system as "right now recovery" if im not mistaken by her words. But yea we give out mistake drinks too at my store. I currently am not aware of any rules against it.

yes